Reviews of online course and membership platforms — course builders, transaction fees, student experience, and pricing tiers.
Showing 3 of 3 reviews in this category
Kajabi promises to replace your entire online business stack. We put it to the test — courses, memberships, email, funnels, and podcasts — and find out if the high monthly cost is worth it.
Teachable is one of the most popular platforms for selling online courses. We review pricing, transaction fees, student experience, and how it compares to Kajabi and Thinkific.
Thinkific lets you build and sell online courses with no transaction fees. We review its course builder, marketing tools, pricing tiers, and how it stacks up against Teachable and Kajabi.
Reviews of online course and membership platforms — course builders, transaction fees, student experience, and pricing tiers. Every review in this category follows the same process used across Pro Marketing Trends: hands-on testing where possible, verification against current published pricing, and an honest verdict that isn't influenced by affiliate commission rates.
Course and membership platforms differ most in three areas: transaction fees on sales, the flexibility of the course builder itself, and how well they handle ongoing membership billing versus one-time course sales. A platform that's excellent for selling a single flagship course might be the wrong fit for someone running multiple drip-fed cohorts or a recurring membership community, so it's worth being specific about which model you're actually building before comparing pricing tiers.
Student experience matters as much as the creator-facing tools — a platform with a clunky video player or confusing navigation will hurt completion rates regardless of how good the course content itself is. The reviews in this category weigh both sides: how easy the platform is to build on, and how the finished product actually feels to the people taking the course.
A platform built primarily for one-time course sales handles the buying experience differently from one built for recurring memberships — drip-feeding content, managing churn, and handling failed payments are membership-specific problems that a pure course platform may not solve well. Before committing to a platform, it's worth being honest with yourself about which model your business actually is, since switching platforms later after you've built out content and a student base is far more disruptive than choosing carefully up front.
Course platforms typically structure pricing around either a flat monthly subscription with no transaction fees, or a lower (sometimes free) base tier with a percentage cut on every sale. The math on which is cheaper flips depending on your sales volume — a high-revenue creator usually saves money on a flat-fee tier despite the higher sticker price, while someone just starting out may genuinely come out ahead on a percentage-based free tier until sales grow. Always run your expected monthly revenue through both pricing models before assuming the cheaper-looking option is actually cheaper for your situation.
A platform's analytics around student progress and completion rates matter more than most creators expect before they launch their first course. Low completion rates often point to pacing or content issues you can only catch by watching where students actually drop off, and platforms differ significantly in how much visibility they give you into that data. If ongoing course improvement matters to you, weigh a platform's analytics depth alongside its price and design tools rather than treating it as an afterthought.
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