- Hey guys,
my name is Christian Taylor.
Welcome back to Craylor Made,
and today I'll be explaining my personal experience with Teachable,
and why I quickly ended up jumping ship to Podia.
For those of you who are new to my channel,
I just launched my first ever online course
on building a WordPress website from start to finish.
New to the online course space, I naturally gravitated towards Teachable.
This is because of the name they have in the online course space,
and also because I've purchased several online courses
from creators who use Teachable, and I liked the experience as a user.
So without too much thought I jumped in,
and purchased an annual subscription to the basic plan for $348 per year.
Everything about Teachable seemed perfect to me.
The basic plan had everything I needed, and the "My Teachable" system
makes it easy for existing Teachable users
to get started right away without having to input personal info again.
The Teachable app is convenient for on the go use,
and Teachable has a reputation that makes people comfortable
entering their payment info on your checkout form.
Looking at the plan comparison page,
there was just one thing I didn't care for:
Teachable takes a 5% transaction fee,
in addition to the obligatory 2.9% fee, if you use their basic plan.
So not only are you paying $29 a month just to use Teachable,
they're skimming some of your profit from every sale.
I figured, you know what?
I'm fine with that.
While I'm launching my products,
I don't anticipate a ton of volume to get started.
And if I'm selling $500 a month worth of courses,
I'm paying $25 of that to Teachable,
effectively making my monthly rate, $54 a month.
There's more to the story here,
but let's keep it to my initial thoughts for now.
I stumbled my way through the setup process,
starting to upload curriculum videos
in the days leading up to my course launch.
This is where I discovered the critical flaw
that led to my desire to jump ship to a different platform.
Teachable limits file uploads to two gigabytes per file;
devastating if you upload 4k video, like I do.
I found that it couldn't upload videos much longer than 9 minutes,
so my only solution was to split videos up into several smaller clips.
I was fine for this for my foundational content,
because I do want things to be segmented, bite-sized and easy to find,
but in the case of tutorials, that might be 15 to 20 minutes long,
I didn't want to split the clip up into two parts,
and have a part one and part two listed in the course sidebar.
Now you could argue, there's a simple fix to this;
just export in 1080p, how many people really watch in 4K anyway?
Probably almost none, but I want this course to be future-proof,
and quite honestly, 4K video is just how I do things.
It's important that I deliver the highest quality product I can,
and I've been ^ uploading 4K videos to YouTube for years,
long before it was even remotely popular among average consumers.
I proceeded with the course launch, continuing to work on edits,
and the remainder of videos I had to upload.
This is when a loyal subscriber, Patrick M,
commented on the launch video that I should check out Podia,
noting that it's better than Kajabi and Teachable.
I went to the Podia site,
and it looked like a pretty clean option to host online courses.
I noticed that there are no transaction fees for any plan level,
and at just $42 per year more than Teachable,
I wondered if the max file size was any better.
To my surprise, it was!
Podia lets you upload files up to five gigabytes in size,
a limit that is way more manageable for my needs.
Both platforms use the same exact hosting, a video player by Wistia,
so that made me really comfortable knowing that
Podia would be reliable and practical for my students.
Podia does not offer an app,
or any sort of integrated system like My Teachable",
so there is more friction for users signing up.
There is a 100% chance the user will have to create an account,
and remember another password.
Podia also charges for additional teammates, and it's quite expensive;
$20 a month extra for each teammate on the base and middle plans.
This is honestly an inconvenience,
and I would end up just giving my bookkeeper the same login I use,
instead of paying an additional $240 a year for them to have an isolated login.
So I decided to sign up for the 14-day free trial,
and start messing around with the platform.
By the way, Teachable does not offer a free trial,
though, they do offer a 30-day refund policy.
The Podia dashboard seemed a bit simpler and more refined than Teachable.
They both have solid panels,
but Podia seems like it's a bit more thought out and modern.
Unfortunately, there's no easy way to transfer data between
online course platforms.
Podia does offer a free migration,
but you have to have purchased an annual plan,
and once you request a migration, they do not allow you to get a refund.
This is because the migration is done by hand and is time intensive.
So they want to make sure you're sticking around,
if they're going to take the time to do that.
Migrations have a two week backlog, so I opted to do it by hand.
Plus, I needed it done quicker than two weeks
to take advantage of the 30 day refund policy at Teachable.
Podia support was very helpful through my migration process.
Whenever I had questions,
I just opened the Intercom widget on the dashboard and sent my questions.
Their support has been consistent,
and I even got replies pretty late at night.
They typically reply in about 30 minutes,
and once you reach a rep and you're having an active conversation,
the support functions mostly like a live chat.
I will say that Teachable has excellent customer support too.
They reply quickly, but it is through email,
and it's not as convenient as having the Intercom widget.
I'm using the Podia Mover plan,
so I can't evaluate memberships, affiliate marketing,
or course embedding in this video.
Setting up my course in Podia was very straightforward.
It works differently than Teachable in that:
you can't really assemble building blocks for each lesson.
If you do a video lesson, like I am doing,
you can add text below the video, but it's a restrictive text box.
It doesn't have nearly as many formatting options as Teachable,
and you can't add images to the text body either.
This is a significant downside.
If you wanted a written version of your tutorial with screenshots included,
that won't be easy to accomplish with Podia.
I do like that the curriculum builder in Podia
allows you to upload multiple videos at a time.
I uploaded all of my finished videos to podia at once,
and this is a lot easier than uploading one by one,
like you have to do at Teachable.
The Podia student section is nice.
I prefer Teachable's since they list the length of each video in the sidebar,
and they don't mark a lesson as completed
until it reaches the end of the video or you manually mark it as completed.
With Podia, it's marked as complete as soon as you click to a different lesson.
This is a quirky flaw that hopefully gets improved soon.
Podia does offer this optional messaging system that's kind of interesting.
It allows students to reach out with questions that arise
as they work through the curriculum.
It functions like a stripped down version of Intercom,
and you can enable it for visitors on your sales page as well.
At the end of the day, there are pros and cons to each platform,
and you need to determine which one is right for you based on your needs.
Teachable offers a native mobile app for students to watch on the go,
and you can even download content in the mobile app.
So students could work through your course on a plane or a cruise ship.
Podia doesn't offer an app.
Teachable allows you to add
a minimum of one additional teammate with their base plan,
Podia charges you a painful $240 a year per teammate.
Podia allows file uploads of up to five gigabytes in size,
Teachable restricts you to two gigabytes.
Podia has the potential to launch a membership program, Teachable doesn't,
but let's touch on one of the things that really bothers me about Teachable;
the payment system.
Earlier I highlighted the 5% transaction fee at Teachable,
on top of the standard 2.9% card fee you'd expect.
This means on the base plan, you're losing 7.9% of your sales on fees.
Once again, I knew this with Teachable going in,
and I was willing to live with it,
but I found a nasty surprise when I went to set up payments;
they charge an additional 2% fee just to offer PayPal
through what they call "Back office".
Back office can automatically distribute payouts
to affiliates and authors of your school via PayPal.
Now, look, I get the concept of paying a fee for automated payroll,
but paying an additional 2% fee to be able to accept PayPal is outrageous.
You're looking at a 9.9% total fee if you take PayPal on the base plan.
What is this?
An eBay listing?
This just goes to show you how ridiculous the 5% transaction fee is.
Why?
Because Teachable is absolutely making money on the standard 2.9% card fee.
How am I confident in this?
They use Stripe as their payment processor,
and Stripe regularly discounts the 2.9% fee
for companies and organizations who bring a high volume of payments.
Because Teachable is playing middleman,
and accepting payments directly, then distributing it to you,
we can guess that their transaction fee from Stripe is probably 1.5% or lower.
My guess is that PayPal isn't offering the same fee discount,
if any discount at all,
and Teachable is compensating for it
by tacking on that 2% fee for PayPal transactions.
Because when they're saying, "Oh, Stripe charges a 2.9% fee,
we can't help it.
We charge 5% on top of it for us."
No, they're making more than 5%.
Stripe has lowered that fee for them because they bring so much volume.
So Stripe may charge them a one and a half percent fee,
and of that 2.9% they're already making a profit.
Using Teachable's native payment system means that
Teachable collects payment on your behalf,
and they hold your funds for 30 days before releasing them to you.
This is because Teachable forces you to offer a 30 day refund policy
for courses sold on their platform.
So they hold the funds in case a student requests the refund,
and apparently they don't feel like they can trust you
to handle the funds on your own,
and send them back to the person if a refund is requested.
This is just more ridiculousness.
Teachable is earning interest on your money while it's sitting there,
and they hold it in case someone happens to request a refund.
This payment system makes me feel like teachable is babying me,
and assuming I'm some sort of scammer who can't be trusted.
So they'll collect the funds for me,
and manage them if someone wants to refund.
And then after that couldn't happen, after the refund policy has ended,
then they'll give me the money.
On the flip side,
I suppose it could make some students more comfortable
knowing that there is some sort of buyer protection available from Teachable,
but isn't that what credit card fraud detection is for?
Let me know in the comments below.
When buying an online course,
do you pay any attention to the platform,
and do you feel safer or more comfortable purchasing if it's Teachable?
Personally, I wouldn't spend my hard-earned money on a course,
unless it's a creator I really trust and believe in.
And if I really trust and believe in someone,
I know they'll handle my money responsibly,
and honor any refund policies if they choose to offer one.
So unlike Teachable, Podia, lets you take payments directly.
You connect your own personal Stripe and PayPal accounts,
and Podia takes no processing fees, period!
The only fees are the ones that Stripe and PayPal take directly from your account.
If you had some massive online course program
that was making many thousands of dollars per month,
you could go directly to negotiate a lower processing fee with Stripe,
and guess what?
Your fee is totally between you and Stripe.
Podia will never be skimming anything from your profits.
That's because they can't.
The whole system is designed where
your Stripe account is linked directly with Podia:
they're not a middle man.
The money goes directly from the customer to you.
When Podia only charges $42 a year more for their base annual plan,
it was a no brainer for me to make the switch.
Podio was right for me, but it's not right for everyone.
If you want to launch a membership program out of the gate,
I would guess that Kajabi is the superior platform for that.
I haven't tried Kajabi yet due to its high price,
but I hear that it's the ultimate online course and membership system,
if you sell enough volume to justify the monthly cost.
There's also other alternatives like Udemy and Thinkific.
Ultimately, every online course platform
has a different set of plans, pricing and unique distinguishing factors.
You could host an online course yourself
with the LearnDash plugin for WordPress,
but then you become responsible for hosting all of your video files,
and that's a nightmare,
if you want them to be properly protected using a system like Wistia.
For my use case and my position right now,
Podia turned out to be the best platform for my needs.
So, which online course system would you use?
Are you going to use Teachable, Podia or go with a different option?
I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments down below.
And if you liked this video, do be sure to hit that subscribe button,
and click the bell so you don't miss when I release new videos.
If you are interested in building a WordPress website,
you can check out Craylor Academy at the link in the description below.
And with that said, I will catch you guys next time.