Heights Platform vs Teachable
To create and sell powerful online courses, you need a powerful platform. After reading this comparison, you should have no doubt about which platform to choose for your online course business.
If you have been considering signing up for an online course creation platform, or are considering making the jump from Teachable to Heights, keep reading below to understand which software better suits your needs as a creator.
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Both Heights and Teachable allow you to create and sell beautiful online courses, however, one of these platforms goes way beyond that in terms of features and functionality. Let's see what makes Heights Platform stand out from its competitor Teachable:
Clear, Transparent and Creator Friendly Pricing
Let's start with the most obvious difference: transaction fees.
Teachable has four payment plans creators can choose from, including a free plan. The free plan might sound enticing for newer creators who are just getting started with their business, however, the features included in this plan are quite limited. Teachable also charges $1 for each transaction, plus a 10% of sale. (That means that if you had just 10 sales of $70 each during a month that you'd already lose more in fees than the monthly cost of Heights Pro plan!)
If you choose their Basic plan for $39/month, they keep a 5% transaction for every sale you make. This is without the standard processing fees that credit card companies retain.
On top of this, if you want to allow your students to pay you via PayPal, you need to activate a special service by Teachable called "BackOffice", which will add an extra 2% fee to your sales, no matter what pricing plan you are on!
Here is an overview of Teachable's extra fees (taken from their knowledge base):
So if you decide to sign up for Teachable's Basic Plan, other than paying $39/month, you also have a total of around 10% transaction fees taken from every sale (5% fee + 2% BackOffice + standard processing fees).
Heights Platform, on the other hand, will never charge you any transaction fees. Everything you earn by selling your courses on Heights is 100% yours to keep. Of course, you will have the standard card processing fees deducted, but we can't do much about that!
Heights and Teachable work in two very different ways when it comes to payments. With Heights, you connect your provider (Stripe or PayPal) to the platform and the money you get from sales goes directly to your account - Heights doesn't hold any money.
In Teachable, once you make a new sale, the money goes to Teachable first, and they hold it for you for 30 days (what they call Monthly Payment Gateway). They even keep 10% of your profits and give it back the next month. For example, if you make a sale in the middle of January, you would receive the payout from Teachable on March 1st.
To justify this, Teachable forces its customers to set up a 30-Day refund policy for their courses, and they handle all the transactions (refunds, disputes, chargebacks).
At Heights we always recommend creators offer a lenient, 30-Day refund policy for their courses, but we still believe that you should be able to make your own choice for your business!
Heights vs Teachable - Feature Comparison
| Pricing | From $19/month | From $0/month + $1 + 10% Fees |
| Free Trial | ||
| Unlimited Courses | ||
| Online Challenges | ||
| Sell Digital Products | ||
| Cohort Launch Scheduling | ||
| Transaction Fees | 0% | Up to 10% |
| Custom Domain | ||
| Branding Customization | ||
| White-Label Branding | ||
| Gamification | ||
| Create Communities | ||
| Student Projects | ||
| Additional Authors | Up to 25 included | Up to 20 included |
| Student Analytics | ||
| Coupon Codes | ||
| Built-In Blog | ||
| Affiliate Program | ||
| Email Marketing | ||
| Landing Page Builder | ||
| Mobile App | Web experience mobile-optimized | |
| Completion Certificates | Only 1 active at a time | |
| Zapier and API | Only Pro Plan and Up |
Full Flexibility To Structure Your Online Course Business
Whether you want to sell unlimited online courses, membership sites, add digital products, challenges, discussion communities and more, with Heights you get full flexibility to create the online business you want.
Also Teachable allows you to create unlimited online courses, sell coaching sessions and set up your course to be a membership site, but that is about it.
So if your goal is not only to create an online course, but actually build an online knowledge business by offering a built-in community, additional resources to your students, selling digital products (eBooks, templates, coaching, events...) and using tools to engage your students and interact with them, then Heights Platform is your ideal choice.
Create a Thriving Community of Engaged Customers
An online course can be much more valuable if aside from the content, students get to interact with the creator, share ideas with fellow learners and become part of a community of like-minded people.
With Heights, building your online community is easy. Discussions in Heights are a perfect place for students to share ideas, ask questions, provide feedback and so on. You are flexible to structure your community the way you want: create multiple discussion boards, set different topics, groups of students, moderate the discussions and link specific communities into a bundle of products.
For more personalized interaction, Heights also lets you send private messages and email to your students.
Teachable does not support any community or interactions aspect.
With Heights on the other hand, you can pick and choose between ways to foster engagement among your students, here is a quick overview:
- Create Projects
- Set Up Discussion Boards
- Automated Gamification Tools Like Points and Badges
- Sell online challenges!
- Access detailed students analytics to track their progress
Creates courses about business growth
"I absolutely love how Heights has taken online courses as we know it and turned it into community.
And I love, speaking of community, that I have a vibrant membership community all in one place. I absolutely appreciate all the thoughts that Heights put into making their platform even better."
Customer Support
At Heights Platform we pride ourselves to offer our customers timely, friendly and helpful support. Check out what our customers are saying about our support!
Heights is The Best Alternative to Teachable
Both Heights Platform and Teachable allow creators to build and sell powerful online courses. So which one is the best for you?
That depends 100% on you. All we can do is explain the different features of each platform and you can be the judge of what works best for your specific needs.
If making a living by selling online courses is not your priority and you are looking for a simple, clean platform that does the job, both Teachable and Heights are good options.
However, if you are looking for a platform that allows you to grow your business easily, has all the features you need to fuel your business (without having to worry about extra fees), and can help you create a community around your course, then Heights Platform will serve you better.
Create Your Platform TodaySee the full feature list and learn why Heights Platform is everything you need to build and sell a successful online course.