Teachable Price Increase 2025: A Better Alternative to Host Your Courses

Teachable just rolled out a significant price increase, and creators are not happy about it.

What was once a go-to platform for launching online courses now feels out of reach for many solopreneurs and small business owners.

The new pricing structure limits key features unless you’re willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month.

Teachable is becoming less accessible to smaller creators and more aligned with targeting larger organizations.

Here’s what’s changed, and why many creators are moving to platforms like Heights Platform.

Teachable's New Pricing: Higher Costs, Stricter Limits

The previous entry plan is gone. If you want to build a course with Teachable now, your lowest-cost option is the Starter plan at $39/month, but it comes with major trade-offs:

• 7.5% transaction fee on every sale you make
• Only 1 published product
• No affiliate features
• No course certificates
• No live chat support

To access core business tools like affiliate programs, certificates, and 0% transaction fees, you’ll need to jump to higher tiers like:

• Builder — $89/month: Limited to 5 published products
• Growth — $189/month: Up to 25 products and white-label website
• Advanced — $399/month: Unlocks 100 published products

This means you're now paying more to do less, unless you upgrade fast.

Why Teachable’s Changes Hurt Growing Creators

Here’s a breakdown of what the current Teachable plans look like:

Notably missing across all plans:

• Limited AI tools
• No course certificates or affiliate program until the Growth plan
• Strict publishing limits even on mid-tier plans
• Limited white-labeling features in low-priced plans

This forces many creators to upgrade long before it makes financial sense.

Heights Platform: The Creator-First Alternative

At Heights Platform, our mission is to empower creators, not restrict them. Unlike Teachable, we don’t believe in charging more to access essential features.

We understand that rising operational costs can lead companies to adjust their pricing; it’s a common part of growth. But those changes should reward loyalty, not penalize it.

At Heights Platform, we’ve never increased prices for our loyal customers. When we introduced new pricing a few years ago, the changes applied only to new accounts—our original customers kept their existing rates, with full access to the latest features. We believe loyalty should be rewarded, not taxed.

Here’s a breakdown of Heights Platform's pricing compared to Teachable:

Why Creators Are Switching to Heights Platform

Heights gives you more power, right from the start. Here’s what you get with every plan, features that Teachable either limits or doesn’t offer at all:

✅ Built-In AI Tools

Heights Platform offers a full suite of AI tools purpose-built for creators, and they go far beyond basic text generation.

These tools are integrated into your program to support every stage of your business, from idea to launch to growth.

You can:

• Generate a full online course in minutes. Heights AI helps you brainstorm your course title, outline the lessons, write your descriptions, and even choose a cover image, all built directly into your account.
• Create entire product offers. The AI Product Generator allows you to describe your business idea in your own words. Based on your vision, it automatically builds courses, community channels, coaching products, and digital downloads tailored to your goals.
• Use AI as your business coach. Heights AI Coach acts like a virtual mentor. Share your goals, and the AI delivers a weekly, personalized action plan to help you grow.
• Control your content with commands. With the built-in AI assistant, you can manage products using plain text. Need to change a course price, publish a lesson, or enable a landing page? Just ask, and the AI executes the task for you.

In contrast, Teachable offers a more basic set of AI tools, including a curriculum generator, quiz creator, lesson writer, and video transcription services.

While these features can assist in content creation, they lack the depth and integration found in Heights AI.

Teachable's AI tools primarily focus on initial content drafting and do not provide ongoing business coaching or comprehensive automation.

✅ AI Website Builder

Designing a high-converting sales page or website used to require multiple tools, hours of writing, or expensive freelancers.

Heights Platform eliminates that friction with the AI Web Page Generator.

This feature empowers creators to launch beautiful, high-converting web pages in minutes, simply by describing what they want.

Here’s how it works: You enter a few details about your offer, like what you’re selling, any existing content or copy you’d like to include, and your preferred visual style. Heights AI instantly generates a fully functional web page inside your account, complete with headings, body copy, images, button links, and even direct integration with your product checkout.

Heights AI doesn’t stop after the first draft.

You can use AI to update your page using natural language. Want to change the layout, rewrite a headline, or add a testimonial section? Just tell Heights AI.

With Heights AI, creators get the flexibility of a professional web builder combined with the speed of AI, all built directly into your course platform.

Teachable offers limited landing page customization and no AI-powered website builder. That means if you want full creative control or marketing-grade design, you’ll likely need a third-party tool at extra costs.

✅ Integrated Community

The most successful creators don’t just teach, they build communities.

Heights includes a fully integrated community space where your students can connect, engage, and grow together, all without leaving your course platform.

Unlike other platforms that make you use Facebook Groups or Slack to host your community, Heights gives you a centralized, distraction-free environment that lives directly inside your academy.

Plus, our AI tools help spark discussions, recommend relevant lessons, and even moderate posts, keeping your community active without adding to your workload.

You can choose to have a free, public community - or a paid and private one (or a mix of both!). Free communitiy channels are public, meaning that posts inside these channels can show up on Google searches, just like blog posts!

This helps you attract new customers without extra effort!

Teachable also offers a built-in community feature on all paid plans, with the ability to organize conversations by categories and control access based on course or membership.

However, compared to Heights Platform's community, Teachable's feature is still limited. There’s no gamification, no AI moderation, and no option to make your community public or discoverable by search engines.

For creators looking to build a true engagement hub or monetize their audience in flexible ways, it’s a lightweight solution compared to what Heights offers.

✅ Gamified Learning

Heights gives you powerful tools to turn passive content into active learning experiences.

Students can submit projects, hit milestones, and receive points and badges.

These features help improve engagement, satisfaction, and completion rates, so your students not only buy your course but also finish it and succeed. You can also track your students' progress and get a clear picture of their performance.

Teachable doesn’t offer structured project-based learning features, leaving a gap in the experience for both you and your students.

✅ No Hidden Limits

All plans on Heights (except for the Challenge plan) include unlimited published products, unlimited students, and 0% transaction fees.

That means you can grow your business without constantly watching your limits or worrying about surprise charges.

You’ll never be forced to upgrade just to publish one more course, add another coaching product, or accept more students.

We designed Heights to scale with you, not restrict you.

On Teachable, almost every key metric—published products, number of students, core features—is limited unless you’re on one of their top-tier plans. That means creators end up paying more, earlier, and often unnecessarily.

Even Teachable's zero transaction fee plans still may have very high hidden payment processing fees from using PayPal and their "back office" service.

On Heights, your payment processing fees are equal to exactly what Stripe or PayPal charges you.

A Better Alternative for More Features and Lower Costs

Teachable’s new pricing makes one thing clear: creators are no longer the priority.

If you're just starting out or scaling up, those limits and fees add unnecessary pressure to your business.

Heights Platform offers a powerful, affordable alternative, with AI tools, a built-in website builder, native communities, and everything you need to succeed as a modern creator.