How to Choose a Course Platform (Without Regretting It Later)

Pick based on your fee structure and student count, not the logo you recognize.

That’s the whole exercise, badly explained by every pricing page in this industry. You’re not choosing a “best” platform. You’re choosing the one whose limits and fees line up with what you’re actually selling this year, not some imagined version of your business three years out.

The short answer

• If you’re starting out with a small list and want to avoid platform fees eating your first sales, look at Thinkific’s Basic plan ($54/month, $40/month billed yearly) — 0% platform fee on Thinkific Payments from day one.
• If you’re fine paying a percentage cut in exchange for the lowest entry price, Teachable’s Starter plan ($39/month, $29/month yearly) works, but it carries a 7.5% platform fee on top of processing.
• If email marketing and an all-in-one setup matter more than entry price, Kajabi’s Basic plan ($179/month, $143/month yearly) is the priciest door in, but it’s not charging a platform fee on its own payments.
• If you’re selling a small catalog with no need for affiliates or upsells yet, Podia’s Mover plan ($49/month, $42/month yearly) is cheap to start but carries a 5% platform fee and skips features like affiliate marketing entirely.
• If you don’t know your first month’s sales yet, don’t buy annual. Every one of these has a trial — use it to model your actual numbers before committing.

What actually matters when you’re deciding

Entry price is not what you’ll pay. Teachable’s Starter looks cheapest at $39/month, but its 7.5% platform fee applies on top of standard processing fees. Podia’s Mover at $49/month adds a 5% fee. Thinkific’s Basic at $54/month and Kajabi’s Basic at $179/month both carry 0% platform fees on their own payment systems, so the “expensive” plan can end up cheaper once you’re actually selling. Run the fee math for your own price point before deciding the entry price is the whole story, our Teachable vs Thinkific comparison walks through what that actually costs.

Student and contact limits bite sooner than you think. Kajabi Basic caps you at 2,500 contacts and 5 products. Teachable Starter caps active students at 100, with only 5 imported students allowed. Thinkific Basic gives you 10,000 students on its entry tier, a very different ceiling. If you already have an email list bigger than a few thousand names, check the contact cap before you check the price.

Missing features can be more expensive than a bigger bill. Podia’s Mover plan explicitly excludes affiliate marketing, upsells, PayPal, Zapier, and assistant seats. If your launch plan depends on affiliates, Mover isn’t a starting point you grow out of gently, it’s a wall. The Podia review covers where that wall sits relative to the higher tiers.

Annual billing is a one-way door on some platforms. Podia’s own refund policy states no partial refunds on annual plans. If you’re not sure you’ll stick with a platform past a few months, pay monthly first even if the yearly rate is tempting, the discount isn’t worth losing the money if you switch in month four.

Admin seats matter more than people expect. Teachable Starter and Kajabi Basic both cap you at limited admin users (1 and 2, respectively). If you’re planning to bring on a virtual assistant or co-founder soon, that’s a real constraint, not a hypothetical one.

Decision table

Common mistakes people make here

Comparing sticker prices without factoring in the platform fee. Someone sees Teachable at $39/month and Thinkific at $54/month and picks Teachable on price alone. Then their first month of real sales arrives, the 7.5% platform fee comes out, and the “cheaper” plan quietly wasn’t. Do the fee comparison before the plan comparison, it’s the actual number that matters, and the Kajabi vs Teachable piece shows how that shakes out at different revenue levels.

Buying annual before finishing the trial. The yearly discount is real. Thinkific drops from $54 to $40, Kajabi from $179 to $143, but locking in a year before you’ve confirmed the platform fits your workflow is how people end up stuck. Podia’s own policy denies partial refunds on annual plans. Use the trial period fully; don’t let a discount rush the decision.

Ignoring student or contact caps until you hit them. Kajabi Basic’s 2,500 contact limit and Teachable Starter’s 100 active student cap feel generous when you have zero students. They feel very different mid-launch when you’re paying for a plan upgrade you didn’t budget for, at the worst possible time to be distracted by billing.

Assuming “all-in-one” means “does everything you need.” Podia’s Mover plan is missing affiliate marketing and upsells entirely, not throttled, just absent. If your launch plan assumes affiliates will drive early sales, you’d find that out the hard way after signing up, not before, unless you check the plan limits first.

Where the actual decision splits

If your business is genuinely early, no email list to speak of, unsure what you’re even charging, the platform choice matters less than momentum. Any of these four will let you publish a course and take a payment. The fee structure and feature gaps start to matter once you have real volume, which is exactly when switching becomes painful.

If you already know your numbers, list size, expected monthly sales, whether you need affiliates, match those numbers against the limits above instead of the marketing copy. The Podia vs Teachable comparison and the Thinkific vs Kajabi breakdown both go deeper on the fee math for specific revenue scenarios than a single guide can cover.

FAQ

Do any of these have a free plan? No. All four require a paid plan after their trial ends, with no free tier on any of them. Podia is the one platform here confirmed to start its 30-day trial without a card; the other three require you to check their signup flow directly since that detail isn’t confirmed here.

Is the cheapest entry plan always the cheapest overall? Not once you’re selling. Teachable Starter’s 7.5% platform fee and Podia Mover’s 5% fee both apply on top of standard processing costs, while Thinkific and Kajabi charge 0% platform fee on their own payment systems. At low sales volume the cheap plan wins; at higher volume the math can flip entirely.

Can I avoid platform fees by using my own Stripe account? Sometimes, and the cost of doing so varies. Kajabi charges a surcharge for using a third-party payment provider instead of Kajabi Payments, 2% on Basic, while PayPal and Kajabi Payments are exempt from that particular surcharge. Read the payment section of whichever platform you’re considering closely; this is the detail people skip and regret.

What happens if I outgrow the entry plan? You upgrade, and the price jumps, sometimes substantially. This guide only covers entry pricing on purpose; if you’re already fairly sure you’ll need more contacts, students, or admin seats than the entry tier allows, price out the next tier up before you commit, not after.

Should I pay monthly or annually while I’m still deciding? Monthly, until you’re confident. The annual discount is real on every platform here, but Podia’s policy of no partial refunds on annual plans is a preview of how these commitments work generally, treat the yearly price as a bet you’re placing, not a default.

Does switching platforms later cost anything beyond time? Yes. None of these platforms publish a specific migration fee, but expect lost time re-uploading content, rebuilding checkout pages, and potentially losing student progress data, which is the real argument for spending an extra week comparing now instead of switching in six months.

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How we got these numbers. Prices and fees come straight from the official pricing pages of Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia, checked in August 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.