Cheapest Course Platform: A Guide to Picking Without Getting Burned
$39 a month sounds cheap until you see the 7.5% platform fee attached to it.
That’s Teachable’s Starter plan, and it’s a good example of why “cheapest” is the wrong question until you know what you’re actually asking. There’s no single cheapest course platform. There’s a cheapest platform for your specific situation, and the answer changes depending on how many students you have, whether you sell through the platform’s checkout, and how much hand-holding you need. This guide walks you through how to answer it for yourself.
The short answer
- If you’re just starting and sales are unpredictable -> look hardest at Teachable Starter ($39/month) or Podia Mover ($49/month), because both let you test the waters without a huge fixed cost, though both carry transaction fees that bite once you’re selling.
- If you hate percentage fees on principle -> Thinkific Basic ($54/month) is the cheapest entry-level plan in this group with a 0% platform fee on Thinkific Payments, so your subscription cost stays flat as revenue grows. (Kajabi Basic also charges 0% platform fee via Kajabi Payments, but it costs $179/month to get there.)
- If you want email marketing and sales funnels bundled in -> Kajabi Basic ($179/month) is the priciest entry point here, but it’s built to replace other subscriptions you’d otherwise pay for separately.
- If you plan to sell a community or coaching alongside courses -> check the specifics in each plan’s limits, since Thinkific Basic, Podia Mover, and Kajabi Basic all include some version of communities, but with very different caps.
What actually decides “cheapest” for you
Sticker price is the least useful number on the pricing page. Four things matter more, and each one has a real number behind it.
Your entry cost. Teachable Starter runs $39/month ($29/month if paid yearly). Thinkific Basic is $54/month ($40/month yearly). Podia Mover is $49/month ($42/month yearly). Kajabi Basic is $179/month ($143/month yearly) — a much steeper entry point than the other three, before you’ve sold a single course.
The platform fee on top of the subscription. This is where “cheap” plans quietly stop being cheap. Teachable’s Starter plan charges a 7.5% platform fee on every sale; that fee drops to 0% only on Teachable’s higher plans. Podia’s Mover plan charges 5% on its own; the 0% rate is reserved for its pricier tiers. Thinkific and Kajabi both advertise 0% platform fee at their entry tier when you use their built-in payment processor — a genuinely different structure from Teachable and Podia’s entry plans.
Payment processing, which nobody escapes. Every platform here still takes a processing cut regardless of plan. Teachable lists 2.9% + 30c for US cards, for example. This is separate from the platform fee and applies no matter which tier you’re on. It’s the cost of a card being swiped, not a platform markup, but it still comes out of your revenue.
What’s actually capped. Thinkific Basic caps you at 10,000 students and 1 administrator. Kajabi Basic caps you at 2,500 contacts and 2 admin users. Podia Mover includes 100 email subscribers before you likely need to upgrade or add on. Teachable Starter caps you at 5 products and 1 admin user. If your list or student count is going to blow past these numbers in the first year, the entry plan isn’t really the price you’ll be paying for long.
For the deeper mechanics of choosing, not just the sticker prices, the how to choose a course platform guide walks through the fee structures and limits that matter once the entry price stops telling the whole story.
If you need PayPal checkout and an affiliate program together
This one’s messier than a single “cheapest” answer. On Podia, PayPal checkout and a working affiliate program both show up together on the Shaker plan, at $99/month ($84/month yearly). On Thinkific, PayPal checkout for buyers doesn’t appear until the Grow plan, at $219/month, which is a big jump if all you wanted was one payment option. Teachable’s affiliate program opens up at its Builder plan, $89/month, and Teachable lists PayPal among its payment methods generally, but it’s worth confirming on Teachable’s own pricing page whether PayPal is actually available on the specific tier you’re about to pay for, rather than assuming it travels with every plan. None of these three is simply “the cheapest” for this combination; it depends on which piece, PayPal or the affiliate program, you can live without at the plan below.
Decision table: what to pick based on who you are
| You are… | Look at | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Brand new, unproven course idea, tight budget | Teachable Starter or Podia Mover | Lower monthly cost lets you test demand before committing to a bigger bill; just budget for the transaction fee eating into early sales |
| Selling steadily, want to stop paying a cut on every sale | Thinkific Basic | 0% platform fee on Thinkific Payments means your subscription cost doesn’t grow with your revenue |
| Want email marketing, pipelines, and courses in one login | Kajabi Basic | Priced to replace several separate tools, but it’s the most expensive entry point here |
| Building a community alongside your course content | Thinkific Basic, Podia Mover, or Kajabi Basic | All three include some community feature at entry level, compare the specific caps before assuming they’re equivalent |
| Small list, low volume, testing before scaling | Podia Mover | 14-day free trial with no card required is the lowest-commitment way to poke around before paying anything |
| Need more than 1 admin user from day one | Podia Shaker ($99/month, owner plus 1 assistant seat) or Thinkific Start ($109/month, 2 administrators) | Both are cheaper routes to a second seat than jumping straight to Kajabi Basic just to get 2 admins |
Common mistakes people make chasing “cheap”
Mistake one: judging cost by the subscription price alone. A creator picks Teachable Starter because $39/month beats Thinkific’s $54/month, then does a decent month of sales and hands over 7.5% of it in platform fees on top of processing. At real volume, that percentage can cost more than the difference in subscription price ever would have. Run the fee structure against your expected sales, not just the monthly bill.
Mistake two: ignoring the free trial’s actual terms. Podia’s trial requires no card and runs 14 days; Teachable’s runs 7 days but comes with a paid plan and a 30-day money-back guarantee behind it. Assuming all “free trials” work the same way means you might get charged sooner than you expected, or lose access to build time you were counting on.
Mistake three: picking a plan based on features you won’t use for a year. Kajabi Basic bundles email marketing, funnels, and a website builder for $179/month. If you’re not going to use the marketing automation for months, you’re paying for shelf space. Compare what you’ll actually touch in the first 90 days, not the full feature list.
Mistake four: not checking the admin seat limit. Both Teachable Starter and Thinkific Basic cap you at 1 administrator. If you’re bringing on a co-founder, assistant, or contractor to help run the back end, jumping straight to Kajabi Basic isn’t your only option; Podia Shaker ($99/month) and Thinkific Start ($109/month) both add a second seat for less than Kajabi’s entry price, and that upgrade cost isn’t in the number you budgeted for on the base plan.
Mistake five: assuming annual pricing is the “real” price. The yearly rate looks better everywhere here. Thinkific drops from $54 to $40/month, for instance, but that number only applies if you commit and pay upfront. Teachable and Kajabi both back their plans with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so an annual commitment isn’t as locked-in as it looks; Podia is the one that’s explicit there are no partial refunds on annual plans.
If you’re weighing two of these platforms directly, the site’s head-to-head pieces go deeper than a general guide can: Kajabi vs Teachable, Podia vs Thinkific, and Kajabi vs Podia all break down fee structures and feature gaps plan by plan.
Is the cheapest plan ever a trap?
Sometimes, yes. A low entry price with a high transaction fee is a bet that you won’t sell much, and if you do sell a lot, you end up paying more than you would on a pricier, lower-fee plan. Teachable Starter’s 7.5% platform fee is the clearest example in this group: fine for testing, expensive once you’re doing real volume. The fix isn’t to always avoid the cheap plan, it’s to actually estimate your first few months of sales before assuming the low number is the real cost.
What if I outgrow the entry plan fast?
Then the entry price barely matters and you should be comparing the tier above it instead. Thinkific Basic caps you at 10,000 students, which sounds like a lot until you’re running a free lead magnet that floods your list. Kajabi Basic’s 2,500 contact cap is tighter still. If your growth plan involves list-building at any real scale, read the full breakdowns in the individual reviews, the Kajabi review and the Podia review both go into what happens once you hit those ceilings.
FAQ
Is there a genuinely free course platform in this group? No. None of these four offers a permanent free tier. Podia used to, and discontinued it. All four instead offer free trials of varying lengths, and Teachable and Kajabi both also promise a 30-day money-back guarantee, which functions as a longer safety net than the trial period alone.
Does the transaction fee disappear if I pay yearly? No, the platform fee and the payment processing fee are separate from your subscription billing cycle. Paying annually lowers your monthly subscription rate; it doesn’t touch the percentage you’re charged per sale.
Which platform has the lowest fixed cost if I want zero platform fee? Thinkific Basic is the cheapest entry-level plan here with a 0% platform fee, at $54/month, using Thinkific Payments. Kajabi’s Basic plan also charges 0% platform fee via Kajabi Payments, but at $179/month, so “cheapest 0%-fee plan” and “has a 0%-fee option” aren’t the same claim, Thinkific just wins on price.
Should I avoid Kajabi just because it’s the most expensive? Not automatically. If you’re currently paying for separate email marketing and landing page tools, Kajabi’s bundled pricing might actually be a wash or a savings, but that math depends on what you’re already paying elsewhere, which isn’t something a pricing page can tell you.
What’s the biggest hidden cost across all four platforms? Payment processing fees that apply no matter what plan you’re on. They’re easy to overlook because they’re framed as a card-network cost rather than a platform fee, but they come out of your revenue exactly the same way.
Can I switch platforms later if I pick wrong? Technically yes, but it’s rarely painless, migrating students, content, and payment history takes real time. That’s the core argument for spending an hour comparing real numbers now instead of guessing and hoping.
How we got these numbers. Prices and fees come straight from the official pricing pages of Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia, checked in September 2026. Where a value wasn’t published, the table shows “—”. Prices in this space change often — confirm on the provider’s site before you buy.