Teachable Vs Udemy Vs Wordpress? The Best Online LMS for Teaching Your Next Course

Edit: Try Podia for 30 days — 100 % Free. (no credit card required)

Here is something that most folks won’t tell you about the online LMS world. Pretty much all of the available options do the same thing.

Here is a quick over-view of my own experience in the online education/e-learning space.

When I want to teach a simple course, Ican do pretty much the same things on Teachable, or Wordpress, without much hassle.

Wordpress has some great free LMS options. They also have some premium plugins that are pretty powerful too. (Sensei, by the WooCommerce folks, is my favorite premium LMS plugin of the bunch)

If you want to leverage an existing platform, and get your course, class and content in front of an existing audience, Udemy is a pretty good place to start.

But when you build your online course business on UDEMY, you’re not really building your platform at all. You’re building Udemy. (and that’s not really a good long term strategy for those of us who like to control what we create :)

Teachable makes creating an online course, and monetizing it, a simple, straightforward and hassle free option as well. You just upload your content, attach a price, style your school, and you’re ready to sell.

Teachable is simple, not all that sexy, but it does work for many online entrepreneurs.

The BEST option for teaching courses in 2018 for aspiring educators and online entrepreneurs?

Podia.com.

Here is an example of some of the courses we’re teaching through MindfulMarketplace.com, on Podia, right now.

Podia is a better option than the analogs above, for a few simple reasons.

1. It’s less expensive.
2. They offer a ton of features. (affiliates, newsletter marketing/drip email automation, digital downloads, full featured courses, pre-launch pages, and most important of all…..private MEMBERSHIPS, which allows your content to morph into a private community)
3. Great looking landing pages with optimized conversion, unlimited color combinations, unlimited courses, and unlimited options to grow your platform in a myriad of magical ways.
4. No fees! (you keep your money — no transaction %, other than default minimal credit card/Paypal fees)
5. Podia also has a 30 day free trial, with no credit card required. See that here.

Having used, paid for and taught on all platforms, I recommend Podia over Teachable if you’re looking at an online SAAS for your elearning platform.

If you would rather build on Wordpress, there are some great themes on Themeforest that work well with Sensei, or some of the free LMS plugins as well.

Do note though. Building your school on Wordpress can be a pain in the ass, in the long run. Once you start teaching, you’ll really prefer to spend your time creating new content, and not managing your tech stack, I promise. (and WP does require constant tweaking, whereas something like Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi or Podia handles all of that stuff for you, so you can work on creating content, and selling courses :)

Any questions? Feel free to send me an email (hi@mindfulmarketplace.com) or simply visit us on FB to see some of our most recent courses, here!