Teachable alternatives in 2026
Teachable is a course platform; a Telegram LMS is a delivery layer. What each one actually has — including the student roster we do not show you.
TL;DR. Teachable is a course platform and this is not one. It has a school site, a player, video hosting, quizzes, certificates and progress tracking; a Telegram LMS has lessons that arrive where the student already is, live sessions with recordings, and an AI tutor that answers out of your own lesson content. Teachable costs $39 to $189 a month with a 7.5% transaction fee on the cheapest plan and processing on top of all of them, and it has no permanent free tier. Here the sales cut is 0% and the free plan runs one course. Most feature rows below go to Teachable. The two that do not are the ones worth deciding on.
Search “Teachable alternatives” and you get twenty course platforms with the same feature grid, each cheaper than the last. This page is not that, because what follows is not another course platform. If you want a school site with a player and certificates, the honest answer is to compare Teachable against Thinkific or Podia and ignore this page entirely.
What Teachable is chosen for
Completeness. It is the whole apparatus of running a course business, and the parts are not decoration.
Video hosting so lessons play without a third-party embed. A course player with a lesson sidebar students recognise. Quizzes. Certificates on completion. Progress tracking, so you can see who is on lesson two and who stopped at the intro. Sequential unlocking by completion. A school site with your own domain, and card and PayPal checkout wherever your students are.
The pricing, from their own page: Starter at $39 a month, $29 billed annually, with a 7.5% transaction fee. Builder at $89, or $69 annually, with no platform transaction fee. Growth at $189, or $139. Payment processing sits on top of every plan — 2.9% plus 30 cents on US cards, 3.9% plus 30 cents international.
Two notes on that. There is no permanent free tier; the trial is 7 days with a 30-day money-back guarantee. And the 7.5% on Starter means the cheap plan stops being the cheap plan once you are selling: past a few hundred dollars a month the fee exceeds the price gap to Builder.
Where the job stops matching the tool
The mismatch is not about which platform is better. It is about where your students already are.
A course platform assumes a destination: students go somewhere, log in, and study. That works, and it is the norm. It also means every lesson is a request for someone to leave the app they are in, remember a password, and arrive somewhere unfamiliar. For an audience you built inside Telegram — a channel, a chat, a community that already opens your messages — that is a step you are adding, not removing.
A Telegram LMS inverts it: the lesson arrives in the chat they already use. No account, no password, no new site. There is a web page too, for anything that reads better on a screen, but nobody is required to go there.
What is actually here
Lessons made of content blocks, delivered into Telegram and readable on a public course page.
Live lessons. A lesson can carry a scheduled time and a meeting link, with a recording link attached afterwards, so a cohort course does not need a second tool for the calls.
Drip by date, and by prerequisite. A lesson with a scheduled time opens when that time arrives. A lesson can also name one that must be completed first — the student marks it done and the next opens. The two gates apply together: finishing a prerequisite early does not skip a date, and a date arriving does not skip the prerequisite.
An AI tutor over your own lessons. Lesson content is indexed, so when a student asks something at week three, the answer is retrieved out of week three rather than invented or fetched off the open internet. This is the one row where the comparison goes the other way — Teachable has no built-in equivalent.
Stars checkout. A course sells for Telegram Stars, which is not a preference: Telegram policy puts digital delivery on Stars exclusively. The sales cut here is 0%, and Telegram’s own cut on Stars revenue is the whole fee stack.
0% is our cut, not the whole cost. Telegram’s own Star economics sit underneath it: buyers pay roughly $0.019 per Star, and Telegram’s developer terms put the payout at $0.013 — so plan revenue on the second number, not the first. See what withdrawing Stars actually pays.
What is genuinely missing, stated plainly
Two things that a course platform has and this does not. If either is load-bearing for you, stop here.
- A view of student progress. Students mark lessons done and that drives unlocking, but nothing shows you the result. There is no roster of who finished what, so you will not know who stalled on lesson two.
- Quizzes and certificates. Not part of this. A course that needs graded checks or a completion certificate needs a platform that has them.
Honestly, where Teachable beats AdminHub
Most of the grid, and it is not close.
- Seeing where students are. The completion data exists here — it is what opens the next lesson — but there is no view of it for the person running the course. Teachable shows you the roster.
- Quizzes and certificates. Absent here entirely.
- Video hosting and a course player. Lessons here are chat messages and a web page, not a player with a sidebar.
- Card and PayPal checkout. Teachable reaches buyers who will not pay in Stars. For a course, that is not a settings difference — Telegram policy makes Stars the only rail.
- A school site on your own domain. Not something a Telegram-native LMS offers.
Who’s who
| AdminHub | Teachable | |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | Delivery into Telegram, plus a web lesson page | A course platform with its own school site |
| Cost | 0% of sales; free plan runs one course | $39–$189/mo; 7.5% transaction fee on Starter |
| Free tier | Yes | No — 7-day trial |
| Payment | Telegram Stars only, per Telegram policy | Cards and PayPal, plus processing fees |
| Progress tracking | Student marks lessons done; no view for the owner | Yes, with an owner-facing roster |
| Unlocking | By date and by completion | By date and by completion |
| Quizzes, certificates | — | Yes |
| Video hosting | — | Yes |
| Live lessons | Scheduled time, meeting link, recording | Varies by setup |
| AI tutor over lesson content | Yes | — |
If… then…
| If… | Then… |
|---|---|
| You need to know who finished which lesson | Teachable — completion is recorded here but not shown to you |
| Your course needs quizzes or a certificate | Teachable, without hesitation |
| Lessons must unlock on completion, not on a date | Set a prerequisite — both gates work |
| Your students already live in your Telegram channel | Delivery where they are removes a step instead of adding one |
| You want students asking questions and getting answers from your material | The AI tutor has no Teachable equivalent |
| Your audience will not pay in Stars | Course access is Stars-only by Telegram policy — that decides it |
| You are not yet sure the course will sell | A free plan beats a 7-day trial for finding out |
Where to start
Decide one thing first: does your course need to measure students, or just reach them? If you have to know who completed what — for a cohort, a certificate, a refund policy tied to progress — a course platform is the answer and Teachable is a good one. If the job is getting lessons in front of people who already read you, without asking them to sign up anywhere, put the first module in as lessons, set the dates, and see whether anyone asks the tutor a question.
For how course delivery on Telegram works in more detail, see selling courses on Telegram. For what protected delivery does and does not stop, see protecting an online course from piracy. To set one up, start from the LMS page. Weighing Kajabi rather than Teachable — it is a wider product and the comparison differs: Kajabi alternatives in 2026.
What people usually ask
- What is the difference between Teachable and a Telegram LMS?
- Teachable is a course platform: a school site, a player, video hosting, quizzes, certificates and progress tracking. A Telegram LMS is a delivery layer — lessons arrive in the chat your students already use, with a web page as the alternative. Different products that both answer 'I want to sell a course.'
- What does Teachable cost?
- Starter is $39 a month, or $29 billed annually, and carries a 7.5% transaction fee. Builder is $89 (or $69 annually) and Growth is $189 (or $139) with no platform transaction fee. Payment processing is on top of all of them — 2.9% plus 30 cents on US cards. There is no permanent free tier; the trial runs 7 days.
- Does AdminHub track student progress?
- Students do — they mark lessons done, and that is what drives sequential unlocking. What is missing is your side of it: there is no view that tells you who finished and who stalled. If you need to see that, this is the row that decides against us.
- Can lessons unlock as students finish the previous one?
- Yes. A lesson can name one that must be completed first, and it stays shut until the student marks that one done. The date gate applies independently: both have to pass, so a lesson scheduled for next week does not open early just because its prerequisite is finished.
- What does the AI tutor actually do?
- It answers student questions from the content of your lessons, not from the open internet. Lesson text is indexed and retrieved, so a question about week three is answered out of week three. Teachable has no built-in equivalent.
- Can students pay by card?
- Not for a course. Telegram policy puts anything delivered digitally on Stars exclusively, and course access is digital delivery. Teachable takes cards and PayPal, which is a genuine advantage where an audience will not pay in Stars.