Teachable Alternative: Selling Courses Without a Revenue Share

Most course platform comparisons stop at the monthly price. That is the number printed large on every pricing page, and the one that tells you least about what you will actually pay. Teachable's Starter plan shows 29 USD a month billed annually. Underneath sits a 7.5% transaction fee, and under that the payment processor's rates. Only all three together produce the amount that leaves your account.

This piece runs three revenue levels, with every step written out so you can check the arithmetic. Every Teachable figure comes from teachable.com/pricing, retrieved 21 August 2026. Anything not on that page is not here either.

Three costs sold as one

As of 21 August 2026 the pricing page lists four plans. Starter is 39 USD a month billed monthly or 29 USD billed annually, with a 7.5% transaction fee. Builder is 89 USD monthly or 69 USD annually, at 0%. Growth is 189 USD monthly or 139 USD annually, also at 0%. Custom is quoted on request. There is no permanently free plan in 2026; the page offers a 7-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Every plan also carries payment processing. Word for word from the same page: US cards 2.9% plus 30 cents, international cards 3.9% plus 30 cents, US PayPal 3.49% plus 49 cents, international PayPal 4.99% plus 49 cents, 15 USD per chargeback. On Starter with a US card that is 7.5% plus 2.9%, so 10.4% of the sale price, plus 30 cents per sale, plus the monthly fee. Buyers outside the US move processing to 3.9% and the total to 11.4%.

A note on the plan names

The pricing page lists Starter, Builder, Growth and Custom. Teachable help articles and third-party sources still refer to Pro, Pro+ and Business elsewhere, among other things as a requirement for teachable:pay. Which naming is current could not be established on 21 August 2026, because support.teachable.com returned HTTP 401 without a login. This article names the contradiction rather than resolving it. Check the plan name inside your own account before you commit.

The calculation: a 199 USD course at three revenue levels

The example assumes a 199 USD course sold to US buyers by card, so 2.9% plus 30 cents in processing. For the self-hosted option I apply the same processing rate. That is deliberate: processing happens either way, and holding it constant leaves the table showing only the difference that matters. On top come MemberJet Pro at 149 euros a year, which is 12.42 euros a month, and hosting at an assumed 10 USD a month. Substitute your own hosting figure.

Here is how those numbers are built. Ten sales produce 1,990 USD of monthly revenue. Starter takes 7.5% of that, which is 149.25 USD. Processing takes 2.9%, which is 57.71 USD, plus ten times 30 cents, so 3.00 USD. The 29 USD plan fee sits on top. Total: 238.96 USD.

At 50 sales and 9,950 USD, the transaction fee is 746.25 USD, processing is 288.55 USD, fixed per-sale charges are 15.00 USD, and the plan is still 29 USD. At 200 sales and 39,800 USD, the figures are 2,985.00 USD, 1,154.20 USD, 60.00 USD and the same 29 USD plan. On Builder the transaction fee disappears and the plan costs 69 USD. Self-hosted, processing stays and 12.42 euros for MemberJet Pro plus 10 USD of hosting are added, flat, whatever you sell. MemberJet is priced in euros, which is why that figure sits in another currency.

Where it flips inside Teachable

Moving from Starter to Builder costs 40 USD more a month on annual billing. A 7.5% transaction fee reaches that same 40 USD at roughly 533 USD of monthly revenue. On a 199 USD course, that falls between the second and third sale. Sell three courses in a month and the cheaper-looking plan already costs you more than the expensive one. That is the first tipping point, and it arrives almost immediately.

Where it flips between Teachable and your own site

You would expect self-hosting to become cheaper only above some revenue threshold. It does not work that way here. It is cheaper at all three levels, because the flat cost sits below every Teachable plan fee and no revenue share is added. Only the size of the gap changes: against Starter it is 168.25 USD a month at 10 sales, 765.25 USD at 50 and 3,004.00 USD at 200, with 12.42 euros for MemberJet still to come off each. Over a year that is roughly 2,019 USD, 9,183 USD and 36,048 USD.

So the tipping point is not where people look for it. It is not a revenue threshold. It is the question of how large the annual gap has to be before the work self-hosting hands back to you is worth doing. At 2,000 USD a year, few people rebuild their tax handling. At 36,000 USD, it looks different. To run it on your own numbers, there is a platform fee calculator with editable rates.

The fee lands on revenue, your profit sits somewhere else

7.5% sounds like a small slice. But the slice is cut from the sale price, and the sale price is rarely your gross margin. Anyone selling through paid advertising already carries a cost per sale before the platform takes anything. A 199 USD course with 100 USD of ad spend per sale leaves 99 USD of gross margin. The 7.5% transaction fee is 14.93 USD. Measured against that 99 USD, it is 15.1%, roughly double the headline rate. Push ad spend to 150 USD per sale and 49 USD of margin remains, and the same 14.93 USD becomes 30.5%. The number on the pricing page has not moved. Your share of it has.

At 200 USD of ad spend on a 199 USD course you are selling at a loss before any fee applies. That is not a platform problem. It shows how narrow the band is in which a revenue share operates: the thinner the margin, the larger the share it takes out of it. A flat annual fee behaves the other way round. It stays where it is while revenue grows.

What Teachable takes off your desk, and what that is worth

Here is the part comparison articles tend to skip, because it complicates the story. Teachable acts as merchant of record on its own payment gateways. In Teachable's own words, the platform collects and remits both EU and UK VAT and US sales tax for creators on the native gateways, teachable:pay and the Monthly Payment Gateway, quarterly through the VAT OSS scheme. That is a genuine advantage, and it carries no separate fee.

Two caveats belong with it. The role applies expressly to the native gateways only. If you connect your own Stripe or PayPal account through a Custom Payment Gateway, no equivalent commitment appears in the public documentation. That does not mean responsibility falls to you; it means Teachable says nothing either way. Clear it up first. And whether teachable:pay is available in Germany could not be verified on 21 August 2026, because the help articles returned HTTP 401 without a login.

Self-hosting gives you two routes. Either you handle VAT yourself through the OSS scheme, with your own invoicing, or you use a payment provider that acts as the seller and handles it for you. In German-speaking markets Digistore24 is the common choice for that, and MemberJet connects to it natively. I am deliberately not quoting rates; those sit with the provider. This is an orientation and not legal or tax advice. For your own situation, ask your accountant.

Five routes side by side

One note before the table: I did not verify Thinkific or Elopage pricing first-hand. Rather than quote numbers from memory, those cells say what to look up. The Teachable row is sourced, as of 21 August 2026.

How different providers' fee models compare is covered in our breakdown of course platform fees, and the same arithmetic against another all-in-one runs through Kajabi alternatives on WordPress. The technical side, signature-checked IPN, access provisioning and refund handling, is in the Digistore24 IPN setup guide.

What MemberJet does, and what it does not

MemberJet is a WordPress plugin for memberships and courses. It takes no revenue share and no transaction fee, because it is not a payment service. It manages access tiers, builds courses out of lessons, handles quizzes, progress and PDF certificates, and connects to Digistore24 natively. Member and course data live in your own WordPress database, with no transfer to hafenstudios. The plugin is licensed under GPLv2 or later.

What it does not do: it will not find you buyers. Teachable has a built-in marketplace, MemberJet does not. It does not handle your VAT, that is your payment provider or you. And it assumes a website rather than replacing one. There is a permanently free edition, and the Pro and Lifetime figures sit on the pricing overview.

When Teachable is still the better call

There are four cases where the arithmetic above stops mattering. If updates, backups and hosting hold no interest for you, a hosted platform is the right answer. If you have to launch this week, a Teachable account goes up faster than a WordPress install. If outsourcing tax handling is non-negotiable, the merchant-of-record role is what the fee buys. And if you use the built-in marketplace, the fee is buying reach you would otherwise have to build yourself.

The honest comparison is therefore not fee against no fee. It runs between fee and work. As long as the fee is smaller than the value of the work it removes, it is a fair price.

What actually happens when you move

Switching is not a button, and this article does not promise a smooth migration. Course content can be exported and rebuilt, which is tedious but straightforward. The user list transfers too, but not the passwords, so every customer has to set a new one. You will lose a share of them in that step. Plan for it.

The hard part is active subscriptions. Recurring payments are tied to the gateway they were created on and do not move with you when you change platforms. In practice that means running both: new purchases go through the new system while existing customers keep their old access until they switch or cancel. Expect several months where both run and both cost money. A practical middle route: build the new site around your next course, not your existing one.

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