Choose an LMS

Best course platform for an established creator business

In this guideTeachablePricing →PodiaPricing →LearnWorldsPricing →ThinkificPricing →LearnDashPricing →

Stop comparing entry features, start comparing the yearly bill

An established business has different failure modes than a first-time creator. You are not worried about whether the builder is friendly; you are worried about a fee quietly eating margin across a full catalog, a plan that caps your products just as you add offers, or an admin seat limit that blocks your team. Those are the axes that matter now: fees, seats, product caps and video limits. Compare them as a yearly total, not a sticker price.

The single biggest lever at your stage is the transaction fee, because it scales with revenue while the subscription does not. Here is where each platform stands:

Fees decide more than the subscription

On the entry tiers, the percentage fee usually costs more than the plan. Teachable Starter takes 7.5% of sales. Podia Mover takes 5%. LearnWorlds Starter charges a flat $5 per course sale, which behaves differently: it stings on low-priced products and barely registers on high-priced ones. Thinkific takes no platform transaction fee, but if you insist on your own Stripe or PayPal it adds a surcharge that falls as you climb: 5% on Basic, 2% on Start, 1% on Grow, and none on Plus. Using Thinkific Payments avoids that surcharge entirely.

For an established catalog, the move is almost always up off the fee-bearing entry tier. Teachable Builder ($69 per month on annual billing) and Growth ($139 per month on annual billing) take no platform fee. Podia Shaker ($84 per month) and Earthquaker ($150 per month) take none either. LearnWorlds drops the per-sale fee from Pro Trainer up. The question is not "which is cheapest to start" but "at my sales volume, does the fee I save by upgrading exceed the extra subscription." Above roughly a few thousand dollars a month in sales, it usually does.

Seats, product caps and video: the operational ceilings

Once the fee is handled, the caps decide fit. Three of them bite an established business.

Admin seats for a team. If several people build and manage courses, count seats. Teachable includes one admin on Starter and Builder, and five on Growth. Thinkific rises from one on Basic to two on Start and six on Grow. LearnWorlds gives one on Starter, five on Pro Trainer and twenty-five on Learning Center. Podia's assistants are staff seats: none on Mover, one on Shaker, unlimited on Earthquaker.

Product caps. A growing catalog runs into these. Teachable caps products at 5, 10 and 50 across Starter, Builder and Growth. Podia caps them at 50, 150 and unlimited across Mover, Shaker and Earthquaker. Thinkific and LearnDash publish unlimited courses on their plans, so if your catalog is large, that difference matters.

Video limits. Video is where storage and bandwidth quietly gate you. Thinkific meters monthly video bandwidth (100 GB on Basic up to 400 GB on Grow). Teachable lists up to 1 TB of video storage across its plans. Podia caps video counts per plan (500 on Mover, 1,000 on Shaker, unlimited on Earthquaker). Different units, so map them to how much video your catalog really holds and streams.

Compare the full grids side by side on the Teachable, Podia and Thinkific plan pages.

Match the pattern to a platform

Reason from your shape. A large catalog with a team and steady, higher-priced sales points toward Thinkific (unlimited products, no platform fee on its own payments, six admin seats on Grow) or Teachable Growth (fifty products, five admins, no fee). A simpler catalog where you want site, email and products in one tool points toward Podia Shaker or Earthquaker, watching the email-subscriber caps that drive its upgrades. A high-volume, lower-priced catalog makes any percentage fee painful, which favors a flat-fee or fee-free plan and rules out staying on Teachable Starter or Podia Mover.

None of this is a revenue promise. It is cost and operations analysis, and it only becomes real with your own numbers. Put your product count, admin seats, sales volume and average order value into the cost calculator and read the yearly totals. Run it twice: today's numbers, and where you expect to be in a year, because the plan that is cheapest now is often not the one that fits your next cap.

Frequently asked questions

Keep deciding