Strategic guidance to help you build your education business

TL;DR The best online learning platform depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to own your brand, pricing, and student list while selling your own courses, we're the strongest fit, with built-in payments that remit VAT and GST across 45+ countries. If you want a ready-made audience instead, marketplaces like Udemy give you reach but control your pricing and discounting. If you're after accredited, university-backed learning rather than a platform to sell your own course, academic providers like Coursera and edX cover that instead. This guide compares all 11 platforms, from course-selling tools to marketplaces to academic providers, so you can match one to how you actually want to teach, sell, or learn.

Picking a place to teach, sell, or learn online can feel harder than it should be, because "online learning platform" covers a lot of very different products. Some are built for course creators who want to sell under their own brand. Others are marketplaces that bring you students but keep control of pricing. Others are academic providers offering accredited, university-backed learning that has nothing to do with selling a course at all. That mismatch is why the wrong choice costs real time: months spent building on a platform that was never designed for what you're trying to do. If you want a deeper walkthrough of that decision, see our guide to choosing a course platform that includes pricing too.

Why choosing the right platform matters

Online learning has grown into a major market. The online education market generated $185.20 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $279.30 billion by 2029. This growth underscores the increasing demand for flexible and accessible learning solutions. Whether you're a creator turning your expertise into courses, a coach building a paid program, or a learner picking up a new skill, choosing the best online learning platform for you can make or break your results.

The challenge is that not all platforms serve the same purpose. Some focus on hosting and selling courses, while others specialize in structured academic learning or creative skills development. This guide breaks down the best online learning platforms, helping you determine which one fits your needs best.

What to look for in the best online learning platforms

Before you start comparing platforms, it's important to understand the key factors that determine the right fit. Whether you're a course creator, or a lifelong learner, consider the following aspects:

1. Ownership & branding control

• Do you want full control over your courses, pricing, and student experience?
• We let you own your student list and create a branded experience, while marketplaces like Udemy control pricing and limit your access to learners.

2. Audience & discoverability

• Are you willing to market your own courses, or do you need built-in audience reach?
• Marketplaces like Udemy and LinkedIn Learning bring massive exposure but may require revenue sharing.

3. Monetization & pricing flexibility

• Can you set your own prices, offer payment plans, or bundle products?
• We allow custom pricing models, and our built-in payment tool, Teachable Payments, remits VAT and GST in 45+ countries for you, while some marketplaces cap course prices or take a significant revenue cut.

4. Course format & engagement features

• Does the platform support video, quizzes, downloads, certificates, or completion tracking?
• Platforms like Skillshare cater to creative, video-based learning, while others like EdX and Coursera focus on structured, academic courses with milestones and LinkedIn integrated certifications.

By keeping these factors in mind, let's explore the best platforms for different learning and teaching styles and needs.

The 11 best online learning platforms, compared

1. Teachable: Best for course creators and coaches

If you're looking to sell online courses, coaching, or digital products under your own brand, we're built for exactly this: you set pricing, own your student list, and keep 100% of revenue from the Builder plan up at $69/month on annual billing. Over 150,000 creators use us to build, sell, and run their online courses.

Why choose Teachable?

• Full ownership of content, pricing, and student relationships.
• Customizable course sites (with branding, domains, and page builders).
• Integrated payment processing with Teachable Payments, which remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries.
• Course engagement tools like quizzes, certificates, and student analytics.
• Native iOS and Android apps on every plan, so students learn on mobile.
• Transparent fee stack: $29/month Starter (annual) at 7.5% per sale, or $69/month Builder (annual) at 0% platform fees; US card processing runs 2.9% + $0.30, international cards 3.9% + $0.30, plus a 0.95% currency conversion fee where Stripe converts non-USD payments.

Best for: Creators, coaches, and educators who want full control over their online school.

Example: A fitness coach could launch a paid video course with us, bundle it with 1-on-1 coaching, and sell it directly to their audience.

2. Udemy: Best marketplace for broad exposure

Udemy is one of the largest online learning marketplaces, with hundreds of thousands of courses across dozens of languages.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Built-in audience: millions of students searching for courses daily.
• Easy course setup: a simple upload process, no need to build a website.

Cons:

• Limited pricing control: Udemy often discounts courses without instructor input.
• High competition: thousands of similar courses in every niche.

Best for: Instructors who want to reach a massive audience but don't need full control over branding or pricing.

3. Coursera: Best for university-level education

Coursera offers university-level courses, degrees, and certifications in partnership with top institutions worldwide.

What makes Coursera unique?

• Courses from prestigious universities (e.g., Stanford, Yale) and industry leaders (e.g., Google, IBM).
• Options for free courses, paid certifications, and full degree programs.
• Structured, instructor-led learning with quizzes, peer grading, and final assessments.

Best for: Professionals seeking accredited certifications, university-backed courses, or corporate training programs.

For creators: Coursera's instructors are university faculty and industry partners invited onto the platform, not a self-serve place to publish and sell your own course. Worth recommending to students who want an accredited, university-backed credential alongside what you teach them.

4. EdX: Open access to high-quality education

EdX provides an extensive catalog of university and professional courses, including MicroMasters programs.

Why EdX stands out:

• Partnerships with Harvard, MIT, and other top universities.
• Offers verified certificates and even pathways to full master's degrees.
• Open-source learning with many free courses available.

Best for: Lifelong learners and professionals looking for structured, high-level education without committing to a full degree program.

For creators: Like Coursera, edX's courses come from university and industry partners rather than an open self-serve upload, so it is not built as a place to sell your own course. Worth recommending to students who want structured, university-partnered coursework beyond your own.

5. MIT OpenCourseWare: Free, high-quality learning

MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) provides free access to lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT courses.

Why choose MIT OCW?

• Completely free and open-source learning.
• Covers a wide range of STEM, humanities, and business courses.
• Learn from MIT faculty at your own pace.

Best for: Independent learners who want high-quality, no-cost education from a top institution.

For creators: MIT publishes its own course materials here for free, there is no path for outside instructors, individual or institutional, to sell anything on it. Worth recommending to students who want deeper, no-cost study of a subject you teach.

6. BBC Maestro: Best for high-quality creative learning

BBC Maestro offers masterclasses by leading experts, similar to MasterClass but with a UK-centric focus.

What makes BBC Maestro unique?

• Courses from renowned UK-based experts in writing, music, and business.
• High-production value with in-depth, engaging lessons.
• Focuses on real-world storytelling and industry insights.

Best for: Creative professionals and learners looking for expert-led courses in storytelling, music, and business.

For creators: Instructors are selected and invited by BBC Maestro's curation team rather than applying to self-publish, so it is not a place to sell your own course. Worth mentioning if your students want a UK-centric masterclass experience from recognized experts.

7. MasterClass: Best for learning from industry leaders

MasterClass offers high-production video courses taught by celebrity experts across various fields.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Lessons from world-renowned professionals (e.g., Gordon Ramsay, Serena Williams, Neil Gaiman).
• Cinematic-quality video production makes learning immersive and engaging.
• Wide range of topics, from business to creative arts.

Cons:

• No structured assessments or certifications.
• Subscription model only, no option to buy individual courses.

Best for: Those looking to gain insights and inspiration from top industry leaders rather than structured skill-building.

For creators: MasterClass invites its instructors directly with no public application or self-serve path, so it is not a place to sell your own course. Worth naming if your students want inspiration from celebrity experts rather than the structured skill-building your course provides.

8. Udacity: Best for tech & AI education

Udacity specializes in technology and AI-related courses, often in collaboration with major tech companies.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Industry-specific courses in data science, AI, programming, and more.
• Recognized "Nanodegree" programs.

Cons:

• Expensive compared to other online platforms.
• Limited non-tech course selection.

Best for: Tech professionals looking to upskill in AI, programming, and data science.

For creators: Udacity instructors go through an interest-form and selection process and are compensated by contract rather than per-sale, so it is not a self-serve place to sell your own course. Still a reasonable recommendation if your students want deeper technical upskilling than your course covers.

9. Pluralsight: Best for IT & software development

Pluralsight offers cutting-edge courses in software development, IT, and cybersecurity.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Advanced courses tailored to professionals.
• Skill assessments to measure progress.

Cons:

• Monthly subscription model can be expensive.
• Focused mostly on IT and coding fields.

Best for: IT professionals, developers, and cybersecurity experts.

For creators: Pluralsight's Author program lets individuals apply to create courses, but it is a competitive vetting process, and authors earn royalties on Pluralsight's pricing rather than owning their own pricing and student list the way you do with your own course. Worth pointing IT or developer students toward it for depth beyond your own curriculum.

10. Khan Academy: Best for free educational resources

Khan Academy provides high-quality, free educational courses in subjects like math, science, economics, and humanities.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Completely free with no hidden costs.
• Well-structured courses for students of all levels.
• Interactive exercises and progress tracking.

Cons:

• Limited advanced courses for professionals.
• Not ideal for certification or career advancement.

Best for: Students, educators, and lifelong learners looking for accessible, high-quality education in core academic subjects.

For creators: Khan Academy is a nonprofit with no paid courses or creator payouts, so it is not a place to sell anything. Worth recommending as a free resource if your students need to shore up core academic fundamentals alongside your course.

11. YouTube "University": Best free learn anything hub

YouTube has become an informal learning powerhouse, with countless channels offering free educational content.

Why YouTube stands out:

• Completely free, with thousands of expert-led tutorials.
• Covers every imaginable topic, from tech skills to personal finance.
• Some channels offer structured course playlists for in-depth learning.

Best for: Self-motivated learners who prefer flexible, video-based education at no cost.

For creators: Anyone can upload to YouTube, but it has no built-in course structure, checkout, or student management, so it is not a course platform you would sell through the way you do with your own course. Worth acknowledging as the free discovery channel where many students already look first.

Which online learning platform is right for you?

With so many choices, picking the right platform depends on your goals. If you're a creator or educator looking to teach and sell your own courses, we're built for exactly this, with 0% platform fees on the Builder plan and up. We offer complete ownership, flexible pricing, built-in payments through Teachable Payments, and tools to grow a course business you own.

Do you have an existing audience through a Youtube channel, podcast, newsletter, social posts, or books? You can turn it into a paid course. With a free trial, you can be up and running in a few days.

Explore how we can help you build, sell, and grow your online courses. Start with a free trial today. Join the creators who use us to build and sell their courses.

FAQs

What is the best online learning platform?

It depends on your goal. To sell your own branded courses, we're the best fit because you own your pricing, content, and student list. For a ready-made audience, Udemy is the largest marketplace. For accredited academic learning, Coursera and edX partner with top universities.

What is the best platform to sell online courses?

We're built for selling your own courses: you set your own prices, keep your student list, and our Teachable Payments checkout remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries. Marketplaces like Udemy reach more people but control discounting and take a larger cut.

What is the best free online learning platform?

For free study, Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseWare, and YouTube offer high-quality content at no cost. They are built for learning rather than for selling your own courses, so creators who want to earn from their content will still need a course platform.

What is the difference between an online learning platform and a course marketplace?

We're a course platform: you build and sell courses under your own brand, keeping ownership of pricing and students. A marketplace, like Udemy, lists your course alongside others and brings its own audience, but controls pricing and discounting.

How much does an online course platform cost?

It varies by platform and plan. Our paid plans start at $29 per month (billed annually), with higher tiers removing transaction fees and adding more products. Marketplaces are often free to publish on but take a share of each sale.

Key terms

Course platform: A tool built for creating, hosting, and selling your own branded online courses, where you set the price and keep ownership of your student list, unlike a marketplace.

Marketplace: A platform, like Udemy, that lists your course alongside thousands of others and brings its own built-in audience, in exchange for control over pricing and discounting.

Teachable Payments: Our integrated payment system that processes checkout and automatically calculates, collects, and remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries on your behalf.

Transaction fee: A percentage taken from every course sale on top of your monthly subscription. Ours starts at 7.5% on the Starter plan and drops to 0% from the Builder plan up.

Accredited certification: A credential issued in partnership with a recognized academic institution, as offered by platforms like Coursera and edX, distinct from the completion certificates course creators issue on their own.

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TL;DR: Most course creators use roughly a third of Kajabi's built-in tools. If your actual workflow is a course builder, a checkout page, and an email list you run elsewhere, you are paying for a marketing stack you do not open. Kajabi Basic sits at $143/month on annual billing. Our Builder plan at $69/month includes 0% platform fees, native mobile delivery, and automated VAT and GST remittance across 45+ countries. If Kajabi's email automation runs your business daily, switching adds external tool costs that close the gap. This guide runs the numbers.

Kajabi's entry tier costs $143 a month on annual billing, and many creators use less than a third of its built-in marketing features, effectively paying a large premium on course hosting alone. If you pay that monthly invoice while running your actual email marketing through a separate tool, you are carrying the "Unused Feature Tax," and it compounds every month you stay.

Leaving Kajabi to protect your margins is a financially sound move, but only if you audit your usage first. For creators who live inside Kajabi's email automation and CRM every week, switching platforms means rebuilding a marketing stack, and that cost can quickly erase your savings. This guide breaks down the real cost of ownership across the top Kajabi alternatives so you can choose based on your actual revenue model.

Identify your essential creator tools

Before looking at any alternative, answer one honest question: which Kajabi features do you open every week? Two clear paths follow, and which one describes you changes everything about the math.

1. Path 1: You use the funnels, email automation, and CRM actively. Kajabi's pipeline builder fires email steps automatically as contacts move through your funnel, and its native CRM tracks every student interaction in one place (though Kajabi's own users and reviewers consistently describe that CRM's pipeline management specifically as limited relative to standalone CRM platforms, worth confirming it actually covers your needs before counting it as a full replacement). If you manage nurture sequences, automated launch sequences, and a contact list through Kajabi's built-in tools, switching to a course-first platform means rebuilding each of those workflows with external software. At 5,000 subscribers, a MailerLite plan runs approximately $32/month on annual billing and a basic Zapier connection adds roughly $30/month on monthly billing or $20/month on annual billing. That replacement stack, on top of a new course platform subscription, closes much of the gap against Kajabi's $143/month entry price before you account for setup time.
2. Path 2: You use Kajabi mainly to host and sell courses. You record your course, upload it, send checkout links to an email list that lives in Kit or MailerLite, and that is the extent of it. If this sounds familiar, you are paying $143/month to host a product catalog that course platforms handle for $17 to $249/month across different feature tiers. Running $1,716 a year through a system you use at 30% capacity is an expensive habit.

Calculating your true cost of ownership

Platform pricing comparisons almost always mislead because they anchor on the subscription line and ignore the full fee stack. Think of it like a receipt with multiple line items: the headline subscription is the sticker price, but transaction fees and processing fees are the line items at the bottom that determine your actual take-home.

Kajabi's Basic plan charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction on top of its $143/month subscription. At $5,000 in monthly course revenue, that processing fee adds approximately $145/month to your cost. Our Builder plan has 0% platform fees, and US card processing via Teachable Payments (our native payment gateway) runs 2.9% + $0.30, so processing costs are equivalent. The difference is the $74/month gap between the two subscription fees, or $888 in fixed annual savings before a single transaction is processed. Check our full pricing breakdown for processing rates across all plans.

Focusing only on course delivery

Course-first platforms are built around one job: getting a student from checkout to course completion with as little friction as possible. That narrow focus produces tangible differences in the student experience, particularly on mobile. We include native iOS and Android apps on every paid plan, so students download the Teachable app, find your course, and consume it with offline playback and push notifications, starting at $29/month on the Starter plan.

Real cost breakdown of Kajabi alternatives

The verified cost and fee comparison below splits across two tables because the key decision factors span more than four columns. Table 1 covers subscription and fee structure. Table 2 covers business model fit and migration trade-offs.

Table 1: Subscription and fee structure

Table 2: Business model fit and what you lose vs. Kajabi

What replaces Kajabi's email and funnels

If you move to a course-first platform, you need a standalone email tool. At 5,000 subscribers, the most common options are:

• MailerLite: Approximately $32/month at 5,000 subscribers on the Growing Business plan on annual billing, which covers automation, landing pages, and website.
• Kit (ConvertKit): Starts at $39/month (monthly billing) for 1,000 subscribers on the Creator plan and scales with list size.
• ActiveCampaign: Pricing scales with contacts and feature tier. The entry-level Starter plan starts at $15/month for 1,000 contacts, while the Pro plan with comparable automation capabilities starts at $79/month on annual billing.

A MailerLite stack at $32/month plus Teachable Builder at $69/month totals $101/month, still $42 cheaper than Kajabi Basic at $143/month, and you carry 0% platform fees. Our business operations blog covers cost modeling for creators at different revenue stages.

Teachable: Lowering your monthly platform spend

Our Builder plan at $69/month (annual) is the most direct margin-saving alternative for course-first creators who already own an external email tool. The plan removes the 7.5% transaction fee that sits on the Starter plan and adds affiliate marketing tools. At $74/month less than Kajabi Basic, the annual saving is $888 before fees, and the 0% platform fee means every dollar of revenue stays with you rather than going back to the platform.

One reviewer's experience captures the core appeal:

"With Teachable, you can go from idea to execution fairly quickly, and get your course up and running and (potentially) making sales fast." - Verified user on G2

The Builder tier is the effective starting point for anyone earning more than $533/month in course revenue on annual billing. At $533/month, our Starter plan's 7.5% fee adds exactly $40/month, which equals the cost of upgrading. Above that threshold, upgrading costs less than staying on Starter. Our revenue and pricing blog covers this break-even math in more detail.

Ideal creator profiles for Teachable

Teachable works best for two specific creator types:

1. The creator with an existing email list on Kit or MailerLite. You already handle your own marketing outside of whatever course platform you use. You want a clean, reliable checkout with built-in affiliate tools and 0% transaction fees, not a second email system running in parallel.
2. The creator selling to international students. You have buyers in Germany, Australia, Canada, and Japan. Each purchase carries a potential VAT or GST obligation. Our native gateway handles filing automatically across 45+ countries, reducing the manual compliance work from your workflow. Our case studies section includes examples of creators at different revenue levels who moved from manual tax filing to automated remittance.

Where Teachable outperforms Kajabi

We built Teachable Payments to automatically calculate, collect, and remit VAT and GST across 45+ countries on every sale. When a student in Germany buys your course, we charge the correct VAT rate, collect it at checkout, and remit it through the EU's VAT One Stop Shop (OSS) system on your behalf each quarter. You do not register in Germany, file anything, or track the liability manually. Teachable Payments also accepts payments in 130+ currencies, so your German, Australian, and Japanese students pay in their own currency without you building separate pricing sheets for each market. Kajabi offers no equivalent, leaving creators responsible for registering and filing taxes in every country where they sell. Our product updates section explains how the gateway handles EU VAT through the OSS system on a quarterly basis.

We also include native iOS and Android apps on every paid plan starting at $29/month. Kajabi's branded mobile app is included on the Pro tier at $399/month on annual billing and available as a $199/month add-on for Basic and Growth tiers. Basic and Growth plan subscribers do not receive a branded app for their school.

Our course-specific tooling, gradebook, compliance settings, minimum watch-time enforcement, and per-student progress tracking, also goes deeper than Kajabi's at the same price point. Kajabi's strength is the marketing stack wrapped around the course, several third-party reviews of both platforms note our learning-management depth as more developed at comparable tiers, which matters for creators whose students need structured progress tracking, not just a purchase funnel.

What to model before you migrate

For non-USD transactions processed through Stripe where currency conversion is required, Stripe charges a 0.95% currency conversion fee shown separately from our processing rate. UK-based creators and those with high-volume EUR or AUD sales should model this fee against expected transaction volume before comparing net revenue across platforms. At $5,000/month in international sales, the conversion fee adds approximately $47.50/month.

We do not include a built-in email funnel builder or CRM. If Kajabi's automation is central to your business today, you need to rebuild those workflows in an external tool before migrating, and that is a real cost to model honestly.

Manual tax compliance

Thinkific's Basic plan at $40/month on annual billing includes 0% platform fees, undercutting Kajabi's $143/month entry tier by 72% on subscription. Thinkific helps you configure tax collection for US and Canadian sales, but remittance remains the creator's responsibility, and VAT collection for UK and EU sales requires additional manual configuration.

Thinkific's Trustpilot rating, 1.8 of 5 as of mid-2026, is worth checking directly before committing. For any creator with international buyers, the Builder plan at $69/month covers automated VAT and GST remittance across 45+ countries without manual configuration, at $29/month more than Thinkific's entry price.

Broad product catalog support, no mobile delivery

Podia's Shaker plan at approximately $84/month on annual billing (as of the June 2026 relaunch, confirm the current figure on Podia's pricing page before publishing) with 0% transaction fees caps you at 150 products (Earthquaker, at $150/month annual, is the only unlimited-product tier). Kajabi's Basic tier caps you at 5 products, which pushes many growing creators into the Growth plan at $199/month (annual) simply to expand their catalog. If you sell a large catalog of downloads, mini-courses, and webinars without needing deep educational infrastructure, Podia's product limits work in your favor. However, Podia does not offer a native mobile app, and students access content through their web browser on every plan.

There is also no automated international VAT remittance. The Builder plan at $69/month sits roughly $15/month below Podia's Shaker plan, and adds native iOS and Android delivery and automated international tax remittance, the two areas Podia leaves open at every tier.

Is LearnWorlds worth the subscription cost?

LearnWorlds' Starter plan at $24/month on annual billing carries the lowest subscription price in this comparison, but the $5-per-course-sale fee scales quickly. At 50 enrollments a month, you pay $24 plus $250 in enrollment fees before card processing, totaling $274/month. That far exceeds our Builder plan at $69/month with 0% platform fees at the same enrollment volume.

LearnWorlds' Learning Center plan at $249/month removes the per-sale fee entirely, but that subscription cost exceeds Kajabi's entry tier and undercuts the value proposition for a margin-conscious creator. SCORM compliance is a narrow requirement. For creators whose courses do not depend on it, the fee structure and subscription cost of LearnWorlds erases the value proposition quickly compared to 0% platform fees at $69/month on the Builder plan.

Built-in funnels, basic course delivery

Systeme.io's Startup plan at $17/month on annual billing includes built-in email marketing, sales funnels, and basic course hosting with 0% transaction fees. If you are leaving Kajabi primarily because of cost and need funnels built in, Systeme is the cheapest way to maintain that capability, at $126/month less than Kajabi Basic. However, the course player is basic, student management tools lack depth, and automated international tax handling requires manual VAT configuration.

Our course player, mobile delivery via native iOS and Android apps, and automated tax remittance through Teachable Payments are meaningfully more polished at $69/month. For any creator where student experience and completion rate affect refund rates and word-of-mouth, a basic course player is a real business cost that does not appear in Systeme's subscription comparison.

Migrating assets: A realistic checklist

A complete Kajabi-to-Teachable migration covers three phases and typically takes anywhere from a few days for a small catalog to several weeks for a large, multi-integration setup, your migration specialist will confirm a specific date range for your setup:

1. Export and import student data: Download your student list, contact records, and transaction history as CSV files from Kajabi's account settings, then import them into Teachable and your email tool.
2. Course content upload (time scales with your course count and complexity): Download video lessons individually from Kajabi (bulk export is not available), upload them to our drag-and-drop course builder, and rebuild quiz and drip settings manually since course structure does not port between platforms. You can apply for a migration consultation to get a specific estimate based on your catalog.
3. Email and checkout reconnection (time varies by integration count): Connect your email tool via Teachable's native integration in Settings, set up enrollment triggers so new students are added to your list automatically, and test a live checkout transaction before going live. Kajabi's custom website pages and landing pages do not port between platforms and require a full rebuild. Kit, MailerLite, and Mailchimp connect via Zapier, available from the Builder tier up.

Our launch strategy blog covers post-migration email sequence setup in practical detail. Weighed against $888/year in subscription savings and the elimination of international VAT filing, the migration time pays back in weeks for any creator earning above $2,000/month. Our success stories section includes creator accounts of the migration experience at different scales.

Decision criteria for leaving your stack

• If your course catalog is small, your email list runs through Kit or MailerLite, and Kajabi's pipeline builder goes largely unused, the Builder plan at $69/month saves you $888/year in subscription costs alone, before accounting for 0% platform fees on every sale. Your Unused Feature Tax is real and eliminating it returns those dollars to your business immediately. Teachable Payments calculates, collects, and remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries automatically.
• If you currently file international VAT manually or carry unresolved EU, Australian, or Canadian tax obligations, that compliance gap is a real financial liability. The Builder plan closes it at no additional cost beyond the $69/month subscription.
• Kajabi Basic's 5-product cap pushes growing creators toward the $199/month Growth plan. Our Builder plan supports 10 products with 0% platform fees at $69/month, $130/month less than the Kajabi tier the product limit forces you into.
• Model the external tool cost first if your marketing runs entirely inside Kajabi's pipeline builder and CRM. At 5,000 subscribers, a MailerLite replacement runs approximately $32/month on annual billing. A MailerLite plus Builder stack totals $101/month, still $42/month less than Kajabi Basic, but the 10-plus hours of sequence rebuild is a one-time cost to scope honestly before committing to a migration date.
• Factor in landing page rebuild time if Kajabi's native website builder and landing pages are your primary web presence. That content does not port between platforms and requires a full rebuild. Weigh that one-time setup cost against $888/year in subscription savings and 0% platform fees, for most creators earning above $2,000/month, the rebuild pays back within the first quarter.
• The math on leaving Kajabi is straightforward for course-first creators. The subscription saving is real, the tax compliance benefit is structural, and the migration cost is bounded and one-time. The only question worth settling before you move is which Kajabi features you actually open every week. If the honest answer is mostly the course builder and checkout, the numbers point clearly toward the switch.

Run the full fee comparison across our plans, including processing rates. The 7-day trial requires a credit card, and a 30-day money-back guarantee covers the first month if the platform does not fit your workflow.

FAQs

When does Kajabi pay for itself?

Kajabi pays for itself when you actively use its native email marketing, automated funnels, and CRM to manage a contact list that would otherwise cost $39 to $79/month on a standalone tool like MailerLite or ActiveCampaign. If you only use it to host courses, the $143/month entry price costs more than a course-first platform plus an external email tool combined.

What are the top Kajabi alternatives for low budgets?

Our Starter plan at $29/month on annual billing is the lowest-cost entry option that includes automated international VAT and GST remittance through Teachable Payments, which no other budget-tier platform in this comparison covers. For creators with any international sales volume, that remittance capability removes a compliance obligation that carries real cost and risk if ignored.

How do I export my Kajabi course content?

You can export student lists and transaction history as CSV files from Kajabi's account settings, but video lessons and text content must be downloaded and re-uploaded to your new platform manually. Our Custom plan includes migration support for high-volume creators moving from another platform.

Do I need a separate email provider?

Yes, if you leave Kajabi for a course-first platform like Teachable or Thinkific, you need a standalone email provider like MailerLite or Kit to run automated marketing campaigns. Zapier integrations with tools like Kit and MailerLite are available from the Builder tier up, so you can automate student list updates after each purchase.

How do platforms handle VAT and sales tax?

Most platforms, including Kajabi, Thinkific, and Podia, leave VAT and sales tax compliance entirely to the creator, requiring manual registration and filing in every country where you sell. We are the exception: our native gateway, Teachable Payments, automatically calculates, collects, and remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries on your behalf, removing you from the tax filing loop entirely.

Key terms

Platform fee: A percentage Teachable or another course platform charges on each sale, on top of payment processing. Our Builder plan charges 0%, our Starter plan charges 7.5%.

Transaction fee: Used interchangeably with platform fee in most course platform contexts. Always confirm whether a platform's stated fee is the platform's cut, the processor's cut, or both stacked together.

VAT (Value Added Tax): A consumption tax applied to digital product sales in the EU, UK, and several other jurisdictions. Rates and registration thresholds vary by country. Teachable Payments remits VAT automatically when you use the native gateway.

GST (Goods and Services Tax): The equivalent of VAT in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and other markets. Teachable Payments handles GST remittance in covered countries automatically.

VAT OSS (One Stop Shop): The EU system that lets a single quarterly VAT filing cover sales across all EU member states. Teachable files through OSS on your behalf each quarter so you do not register separately in Germany, France, or any other member state.

Annual billing: Paying a platform subscription in one upfront yearly payment rather than month to month. Annual billing typically reduces the effective monthly rate. All plan prices in this article use the annual billing rate unless stated otherwise.

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TL;DR: Teachable is the only platform in this comparison that automatically calculates and remits VAT, GST, and sales tax in 45+ countries through Teachable Payments, our native payment gateway. Thinkific handles US and Canada sales tax automatically and calculates VAT for UK and EU sales, but creators remain responsible for filing with foreign tax authorities. If you sell to students in Europe, Australia, or other international markets, that gap puts you personally responsible for registering and filing in jurisdictions beyond the US and Canada. We close that gap through Teachable Payments, removing you from the filing loop entirely.

International tax compliance is the most commonly overlooked operational risk when creators choose a course platform. Most platforms handle domestic payment processing reliably, but the gap between collecting payment from an international student and actually remitting the correct tax to that country's authority is where creators run into trouble. Teachable solves this through Teachable Payments, our native payment gateway that automatically calculates, collects, and remits taxes in 45+ countries, removing you from the filing loop entirely.

If you sell to students outside the US, international tax compliance should be your first filter on any platform you evaluate, not an afterthought. This comparison examines how Teachable stacks up against Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia, LearnWorlds, Skool, and Systeme.io on tax remittance, pricing structure, and the features that matter most to creators who sell globally.

What to look for when evaluating a Thinkific alternative

When evaluating alternatives to Thinkific, creators consistently prioritize three criteria. These are the same operational gaps that drive platform switches regardless of which platform a creator starts with.

1. Automated VAT remittance on cross-border sales: Many platforms calculate VAT for UK and EU sales, but creators remain responsible for remitting that VAT to foreign tax authorities. When you sell to a student in Germany, France, Australia, or the UK, you are personally responsible for registering in each jurisdiction, tracking your obligations, and filing on schedule. Teachable removes you from that loop entirely. Through Teachable Payments, we automatically calculate, collect, and remit taxes in 45+ countries, so you never pay collected VAT or GST amounts to tax authorities directly.
2. Support response time during a live launch: For a creator running a 48-hour live launch to a warm email list, support response time is a business continuity question, not a nice-to-have. As of mid-2026, Thinkific's Trustpilot rating is 1.8 out of 5, with billing, cancellation, and content-deletion issues among the most cited complaints in recent reviews. Support response speed is worth verifying for any platform you evaluate before a high-stakes launch window.
3. Tier limits that force premature upgrades: As revenue grows, creators bump into limits on administrative seats, community features, and advanced automation that force a tier jump before their earnings justify it. Teachable's Builder plan at $69/month (annual) includes 0% platform fees, affiliate tools, and unlimited courses, with no caps that force upgrades based on product count alone.

The compliance gap in your current platform

The practical risk of international VAT is this: digital services sold to buyers in EU countries, the UK, Australia, and many other markets create an obligation the moment you cross that country's registration threshold. As a Thinkific creator, you are personally responsible for tracking those thresholds, registering in each relevant jurisdiction, collecting the correct rate, and filing on schedule.

If you sell internationally

If students in Europe, Australia, Canada, or any non-US market make up a meaningful share of your revenue, the VAT filing burden is a real risk that compounds as you grow. Our payments documentation confirms that Teachable Payments handles this automatically in 45+ countries, removing you from the filing loop entirely on transactions processed through the native gateway.

If your buyers are all in the US

If you sell exclusively to US-based students, Thinkific's tax handling covers that compliance scope adequately. In that scenario, the decision comes down to builder preference, pricing math at your current revenue, and how much the support pattern matters to your tolerance for launch risk.

Thinkific alternatives at a glance

The table below uses entry-level annual pricing where available, as referenced on Teachable's pricing page. Platform fees are separate from credit card processing fees.

Teachable

For creators with international buyers, Teachable is the only platform in this comparison with automated VAT, GST, and UK VAT remittance built in across 45+ countries. Skool automates EU VAT remittance as Merchant of Record but does not collect UK VAT and has not confirmed GST handling in its documentation. Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia, and LearnWorlds all leave filing and remittance to the creator. Our no-code course builder handles video, audio, text, quizzes, and drip content, and the built-in checkout includes order bumps, one-click upsells, and abandoned cart recovery on every plan. The revenue and pricing resources on our blog cover the fee math in more depth.

• Who it fits: Individual creators and coaches who sell to an international audience and want payments, automated tax remittance, and student management in one plan without writing code or managing external tax tools. iOS and Android apps are included on every plan at no additional cost, giving your students a real mobile experience rather than a browser wrapper. Teachable is also SOC 2 Type II certified and GDPR compliant, worth mentioning alongside tax compliance if your students ask about data security before purchasing.
• How our tax handling works: Our native payment gateway, Teachable Payments, automatically calculates, collects, and remits sales tax, VAT, and GST in 45+ countries, and accepts student payments in 130+ currencies so international buyers pay in their own currency without you configuring separate pricing sheets. The Teachable Payments support documentation confirms that for transactions processed through the native gateway, you never pay collected VAT or GST amounts to tax authorities directly because we handle remittance on your behalf. This infrastructure is built into a $69/month course platform.
• Pricing math worth running: The Starter plan at $29/month (annual billing) carries a 7.5% transaction fee. Once your monthly revenue passes approximately $533, that fee costs more than the $40/month price gap between Starter and Builder. The Builder plan at $69/month (annual) removes the transaction fee entirely and adds affiliate tools, making it the tier where our economics are strongest for growing creators.
• The honest limitation: Email funnel building and CRM are not built in. Creators who need email automations and sales sequences alongside course delivery can connect a third-party email tool through our native integrations.

"Classes are easy to create and navigate." - Verified user on G2

Kajabi

Kajabi combines course delivery with a full email marketing stack, CRM, and pipeline builder in one subscription. The platform is positioned at a higher price tier than most standalone course platforms.

• Who it fits: Creators earning $5,000 to $10,000 or more per month who need email sequences, pipeline automation, and course delivery in one tool and can absorb the higher subscription cost.
• The honest trade-off: Our Builder plan at $69/month (annual) includes automatic VAT and GST remittance in 45+ countries, so you get tax compliance built in at our mid-tier price point. Kajabi includes a built-in email marketing stack, CRM, and pipeline builder, but tax remittance remains the creator's responsibility even at Kajabi's higher entry price. Where Kajabi's CRM focuses on funnel tracking and contact scoring, our course-specific tooling goes deeper on gradebook functionality, drip scheduling, and completion enforcement, which matters more to creators whose primary product is the course itself rather than the funnel around it.

Podia

Podia suits creators selling digital downloads alongside courses who want a clean, low-friction storefront.

• Who it fits: Solo creators with a primarily US-based audience who prioritize simplicity. Product listings are capped at 50 on Mover ($42/mo annual) and 150 on Shaker, unlimited listings require the Earthquaker plan at $150/mo annual.
• The honest trade-off: Podia's Help Center documents that it can calculate and collect tax in jurisdictions where you are registered, but explicitly states that Podia does not file taxes on behalf of users. Remittance to foreign tax authorities remains your responsibility, which is the same gap as Thinkific. If you sell to students in Europe, Australia, or other non-US markets, that obligation applies here too. Through Teachable Payments, we automatically remit taxes in 45+ countries, and our Builder plan at $69/month (annual) includes native iOS and Android apps at no additional cost.

LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds targets creators who want an academic-style course structure with advanced quiz engines, SCORM compatibility, and interactive video.

• Who it fits: Creators building courses that need formal assessment structures, branching content paths, or the ability to import and deliver existing SCORM packages.
• The honest trade-off: Where LearnWorlds falls short is international tax compliance. Remittance to foreign tax authorities remains the creator's responsibility, the same gap as Thinkific and Podia. Through Teachable Payments, we handle both calculation and remittance automatically in 45+ countries, which means you can sell internationally without managing tax filings across multiple jurisdictions.

Skool

Skool is a community-first platform built around gamification, group discussions, and live event hosting.

• Who it fits: Creators whose primary product is the community itself, with courses serving as supporting content rather than the core offer.
• The honest trade-off: Per Skool's help documentation, Skool acts as Merchant of Record for EU VAT and automatically collects, remits, and files it on your behalf. However, Skool does not collect UK VAT, it is registered as a virtual training business, which is exempt in the UK, and GST remittance is not confirmed in Skool's documentation. If you sell to students in the UK or Australia, those obligations would remain yours on Skool. The real distinction is product structure. Skool is built around community with courses as supporting content, while Teachable is built around course delivery with community as a supporting feature. If structured course delivery, drip content, and a dedicated checkout with order bumps are central to your product, our Builder plan at $69/month (annual) covers those alongside automated tax remittance in 45+ countries.

Systeme.io

Systeme.io offers a free entry tier and positions itself as a budget funnel builder for creators who need basic course delivery alongside email sequences and sales page tools.

• Who it fits: Creators at the very beginning of their journey who need funnel tools, basic course hosting, and a low or zero monthly fee while validating demand.
• The honest trade-off: As your revenue grows, our native mobile apps, built-in checkout, and automated tax remittance in 45+ countries provide a more stable foundation than Systeme.io's basic feature set.

Why international VAT remittance is the deciding factor

Thinkific remits US and Canada sales tax automatically and calculates VAT for UK and EU sales, which is genuine, functional tax handling for North American sellers. However, creators remain responsible for remitting that VAT to foreign tax authorities. When you sell a course to a student in Germany, you have a VAT obligation in Germany. When you sell to a student in Australia, you have a GST obligation in Australia. Thinkific calculates the correct rate at checkout but the remittance relationship with those tax authorities is yours to manage.

Our Teachable Payments changes that structure entirely. As documented in our payments documentation, we handle the filing relationship with tax authorities on your behalf in 45+ countries. You receive your payout and a clean record of what was collected, without ever touching a foreign tax form.

How to decide if Teachable is right for you

• Site builder customization: Thinkific's site builder offers more layout flexibility than our standard templates. Creators who want full control over homepage design, custom landing pages, and branded course storefronts without code will find Thinkific's builder more accommodating. Three responsive themes, each with multiple styles, give meaningful visual range. Our builder prioritizes speed to first sale over design depth, with clean templates that handle the most common creator needs without requiring you to invest time in layout decisions before your first student enrolls. For creators who sell internationally, that speed to first sale is paired with automated tax remittance in 45+ countries, which Thinkific does not offer.
• Zero platform fees from the entry tier: Thinkific charges 0% transaction fees on all paid plans, including the entry plan. Our Starter plan at $29/month carries a 7.5% fee. Above approximately $533/month in revenue, upgrading to our Builder plan eliminates the fee entirely, on top of the automated tax remittance available across all Teachable plans. The Builder plan at $69/month (annual) includes 0% platform fees and affiliate tools, making it the tier where our economics are strongest for growing creators.
• Structured course building experience: Thinkific's course builder is clean, well-documented, and suited to creators who prioritize content organization and layout control. Our course builder covers the core content types optimized for creators who want to go from signup to a live, purchasable course as quickly as possible. For creators whose audience is entirely US-based and whose course structure is the main product differentiator, Thinkific's builder may be a closer fit. For creators who sell internationally, our automated tax remittance through Teachable Payments removes the VAT filing burden that Thinkific creators carry themselves.

Is Teachable the right move for you?

Use this as a decision filter before comparing features in more depth.

Switch to Teachable if

1. You sell internationally and want VAT and GST remittance handled automatically, alongside structured course delivery and a built-in checkout, in one plan.
2. You want native iOS and Android apps included in your plan at no extra cost.
3. Your monthly revenue is above approximately $533 and you want 0% platform fees starting at $69/month on annual billing.
4. You want a live checkout with order bumps and upsells without a third-party page builder.

When Thinkific may be a closer fit

1. Your entire student base is in the US and Canada, and you have no plans to sell internationally.
2. You have built significant course content in Thinkific's builder and the migration effort outweighs the operational benefit of switching.

For most creators selling to an international audience, the VAT filing gap is the decision. If automated tax remittance in 45+ countries, 0% platform fees at $69/month, and a no-code checkout are the right fit for your current setup, start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

FAQs

Does Thinkific handle VAT for international sales?

No, Thinkific does not remit VAT or GST to foreign tax authorities on your behalf. You are personally responsible for registering, tracking, and filing taxes for sales made to students outside the US and Canada, where Thinkific's automatic remittance coverage ends.

What is the cheapest Thinkific alternative?

Our Starter plan costs $29/month on annual billing. Model your transaction fees before deciding: the Starter plan's 7.5% fee makes upgrading to the Builder plan ($69/month, annual) the cheaper option once monthly revenue passes approximately $533. Systeme.io offers a free basic plan for creators at the very beginning of their journey.

How does Teachable handle international taxes compared to Thinkific?

Our native gateway, Teachable Payments, automatically calculates, collects, and remits VAT and GST in 45+ countries, as confirmed by our payments documentation. Thinkific automates sales tax remittance for the US and Canada and calculates VAT for UK and EU sales, but creators remain responsible for remitting that VAT to foreign tax authorities. Of the platforms in this comparison, Teachable is the only one with automated remittance covering 45+ countries, giving you the broadest international tax compliance coverage available at this price tier.

Can I migrate my course from Thinkific to Teachable without losing student data?

Yes, you can migrate your content and student data from Thinkific to Teachable. Our support team provides migration assistance on select plans, and our support documentation covers how creators have moved their content and student records across platforms.

Does Thinkific charge transaction fees on paid plans?

Thinkific charges 0% platform transaction fees on all paid plans. Standard credit card processing fees still apply on every transaction at rates set by your payment gateway.

Key terms glossary

Teachable Payments: Our native payment gateway that automatically handles global tax compliance including VAT, GST, and US sales tax in 45+ countries.

Tax remittance: The process of sending collected sales tax, VAT, or GST to the appropriate government tax authority, which teachable:pay handles on your behalf for transactions processed through the native gateway.

VAT (Value Added Tax): A consumption tax applied to digital products sold to buyers in the European Union and many other international markets, creating a filing obligation for creators who exceed the registration threshold in each country.

Platform fee: The percentage-based transaction fee a course host charges on each sale, separate from credit card processing fees, which stack on top of the platform fee for every transaction.

Break-even point: The monthly revenue threshold where transaction fees on a lower-tier plan equal the higher subscription cost of an upgraded plan. For Teachable, the Starter-to-Builder break-even is approximately $533/month on annual billing.

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TL;DR: To go live on TikTok, you need 1,000 followers and must be at least 18, though the threshold can vary by region. In the app, tap the + button, select LIVE, add a title, and tap Go LIVE. To stream from a computer, use TikTok LIVE Studio or connect third-party encoding software with your TikTok stream key. There's no official way around the follower requirement, so growing your account is the reliable path. Once you're set up, course creators can use LIVE for Q&As, demos, and pre-launch sessions that send viewers straight to a course or coaching offer.

If you’re a content creator looking for new ways to engage with your audience and learn how to go live on TikTok, this guide covers what you need before you start, the exact steps in the app and on a PC, and how to make your first LIVE worth the time.

TikTok's Live feature lets you connect with your audience in real time and show the authentic, unscripted side they’ve never seen before.

So, let’s take a closer look at the Live feature, how to access it, and the best tips and ideas to help you get started.

What are TikTok Lives?

TikTok Lives are live videos streamed on the TikTok LIVE section of the app. This live stream-specific section gives certain TikTok content creators a chance to interact with their followers directly and instantaneously.

Use TikTok Lives correctly, and you can respond to users who are participating in a live stream in lots of fun, creative ways. For example, you can answer questions or comments, sell products, promote businesses, receive gifts, and much more.

Think of TikTok Lives as the live-streamed video equivalents of Facebook Live videos and Instagram Live videos. Only some creators qualify for TikTok LIVE creation, but you could see several major benefits if you qualify. TikTok Lives can become a highly effective way to make money or to promote a product, for instance, but only if you know how to get a live stream going in the first place.

What are the benefits of going live on TikTok?

There are a few reasons why you might want to go live on TikTok:

• Great way to connect with your audience: live streams are perfect for answering questions and interacting with your audience in real time, which helps build trust and deepen the connection.
• Get discovered: LIVE videos can appear in viewers' For You and Following feeds, in search results and on the LIVE tab. This can help you get discovered by new people and grow faster.
• Make money on TikTok: if you’re 18+ years old, your viewers can send you virtual Gifts during a live stream, which you can later exchange for cash.

How many followers do you need to go live on TikTok?

You need 1,000 followers to go live on TikTok, and you must be at least 18 years old. TikTok's help center notes that the follower requirement may vary across regions, so the LIVE option can appear earlier for some accounts.

To access the Live feature on the TikTok app, you must have at least 1,000 followers. To access some of TikTok’s features, like adding a link to your profile bio, you can find workarounds like switching to a Business account. However, with the Live feature, the minimum of followers applies to Creator and Business accounts.

How to go live on TikTok

The process of going live on TikTok is fairly straightforward:

• Step 1: Open the TikTok app and tap the Add post + button at the bottom.

• Step 2: Tap LIVE at the bottom. You may need to scroll across the options to find it. (screenshot)
• Step 3: Add a title, then set up any LIVE tools or settings you want, such as moderation. When you’re ready to go live, press the big red live button “GO LIVE.”
• Step 4: When you’re ready to end your live video, tap the End LIVE button at the top, then tap End now.

During your live, you’ll get access to various live video features like camera filters, effects, an option to flip the camera and add filters to comments. You can also change LIVE tools and safety settings mid-stream by tapping More at the bottom, then Settings. Use a TikTok camera to add effects to make your live videos more visually appealing.

How to go live on TikTok without 1,000 followers

People without 1,000 followers on TikTok don’t have the live option.

There is no official way to unlock LIVE below the follower threshold for your region. TikTok does say the threshold may vary across regions, so check whether LIVE appears when you tap the + button before assuming you are locked out.

If you meet the requirements and still can't see LIVE, report it in the app: go to your profile, tap the menu in the top right, then Settings and privacy, Report a problem and LIVE. Use this only when you already meet the requirements, not as a workaround.

If you stream on another platform already, TikTok LIVE Studio has an Apply for LIVE access form for streamers with a channel elsewhere. Review can take days. Otherwise, the reliable route is growing to 1,000 followers with consistent short videos. Our guide to building a TikTok following covers that.

How to go live on TikTok on a PC

Going live on TikTok on your PC is quick and simple. You need LIVE access first, so most creators unlock LIVE on mobile before streaming from a computer. You can do so in one of two ways:

• Use third-party streaming software
• Use the proprietary TikTok LIVE Studio

Want to use third-party streaming software for your TikTok livestream? Once you’ve chosen the right encoding software, follow these steps:

• Open your TikTok app, then select the plus sign at the bottom of the screen, then tap LIVE
• Choose the title and filter effects you want to use
• Click Cast to PC
• Once your TikTok stream begins, you’ll see a stream key and server URL. Write both down
• Open the encoding software you want to use, then look for a place to edit streaming destinations
• Pick a destination with a “Custom RTMP” name or similar
• Paste your TikTok stream key and the server URL to the right fields and save your changes

These steps will let you start your live stream from your chosen encoding software. It’ll then be broadcast straight to your TikTok channel.

Alternatively, if you want to use the TikTok LIVE Studio software:

• Download the software from TikTok’s website. LIVE Studio runs on Windows and macOS. Install it on your computer
• When installation has finished, check the checkbox next to Run TikTok LIVE Studio and click Finish
• TikTok LIVE Studio will open. Log in with your TikTok profile credentials
• Check your LIVE access status in the top right corner. If you don't have access yet, click Your LIVE access to apply.
• You’ll need to set up the software, such as making sure your camera and microphone are working. Fiddle with the settings as needed
• Then you can begin streaming whenever you are ready by tapping the Create icon

If you’re not sure how to get LIVE access, see above.

TikTok LIVE requirements

Apart from the minimum 1,000 followers, there are three more requirements you need to meet to access all the live features available on the app:

• You must be 18 years or older to go live on your account.
• You must be 18 years and older (19 in South Korea) to receive gifts from your audience during the live. Gifts are virtual offerings that you can redeem into cash later on.
• You must follow TikTok's Community Guidelines and Terms of Service. A recent LIVE suspension can block your access.

How to go live with someone on TikTok

What’s cool with TikTok Live is that it allows you to go live with someone else or join a live of other content creators.

How to join a live on TikTok

If you want to join a live of another content creator or a friend, the process is very simple:

• Step 1: Open the app and tap LIVE at the top to see creators who are live now.

• Step 2: Browse the lives and select the live you want to join. Then, find the multi-guest button at the bottom to request to join the live:

Tips for going live on TikTok

When you’re ready to go live, here are some tips to help you make the best out of your live stream:

Pick the right time

When you go live, you want to pick the best time to do so when most of your audience is online and ready to engage with you.

Influencer Marketing Hub has found that the best times to post on TikTok are:

• On Mondays: 6 AM, 10 AM, 10 PM EST
• On Tuesdays: 2 AM, 4 AM, 9 AM EST
• On Wednesdays: 7 AM, 8 AM, 11 PM EST
• On Thursdays: 9 AM, 12 AM, 7 PM EST
• On Fridays: 5 AM, 1 PM, 3 PM EST
• On Saturdays: 11 AM, 7 PM, 8 PM EST
• On Sundays: 7 AM, 8 AM, 4 PM EST

However, these times are just a general guideline, and you’ll get the best results by looking at your individual analytics. You can access them by going to Creator Tools > Analytics > Followers > Follower Activity.

Keep it short and sweet

Plan a length that fits your goal. A 30-minute LIVE gives you enough time to accomplish your goals, engage with your audience, answer questions and end your live before people get bored or distracted.

Go in prepared

While the beauty of a live stream is that it’s unscripted and informal, you still want to go in with a plan in mind. When you’re in front of a live audience, you might get nervous, and if you have prepared in advance, you’ll be more likely to keep your audience engaged at all times.

So, set the goal for your live stream, plan your content, and what you want to say during your live. If you want to share books, articles, or other resources, have all the links and names on hand so you can easily give them to your audience when it’s the right time.

Good lighting is key

Good quality video ensures that people are engaged and interested. And good lighting helps you ensure that the quality of your video is great.

So, make sure you’re live streaming in front of a window where you get plenty of natural daylight. Or consider turning on the filming lights or using a ring light.

Minimize background noise and movement

You want your audience to hear you when you stream, right? So, find a quiet space for your live stream where there is no noise or minimal background noise.

Also, streaming from one location is better than streaming on the move. It ensures that your viewers don’t get motion sickness, and it’s easier for them to concentrate on what point you’re making when you are stationary and in focus on their screens.

Engage with your audience

When you’re live, spend time interacting with your viewers. Greet anyone new who joins in, thank them for the gifts and donations, and answer any questions people might have in the comment section.

This will show your audience that you care about them, and it’s also an easy way to generate topics for conversation when you run out of things to say.

TikTok LIVE ideas for content creators

Ready to go live but not sure where to start? Here are a few ideas for a fun and interactive live:

Host an interview

A 30-minute-long TikTok Live is a perfect opportunity to do an interview with an expert or someone your audience would find inspiring. TikTok allows anyone to join a live stream, so you can interview people from another side of the world without hassle.

Host a how-to demo

Do a live stream dedicated to explaining something your audience is curious about. For example, if you have an online baking course, do a baking live where you share your favorite quick sweet recipe.

Behind the scenes

Chances are your audience is curious to see what the scenes of running your business look like. Let them in by dedicating a live stream to showing around your studio or showing how you edit videos for your online course.

Live Q&A session

Instead of answering questions in a video or a blog post, do a quick live stream and answer your audience’s questions live.

How to use TikTok LIVE to sell an online course

A LIVE works best as the top of a funnel, not the whole sale. Viewers who watch you teach for 30 minutes have already sampled your course, so the next step is to give them somewhere to buy it.

• Pre-sell before you build. Run a LIVE on the problem your course solves, then point viewers to a pre-sale page. Our guide on how to pre-sell a course walks through it.
• Teach one lesson live. A short demo from your curriculum shows the quality of the full course. If you haven't built it yet, start with our guide on how to create an online course, then host it on our online course platform.
• Turn live questions into coaching. Viewers who want more help than a course gives are natural coaching clients.
• Move viewers to your email list. TikTok LIVE ends when you stop streaming, but your email list stays yours. Offer a free resource in the LIVE and collect emails through it.

A TikTok LIVE builds the audience and proves people want what you're teaching, but it's not where you deliver a full course. If you want to expand your curriculum and deliver it in a structured way, we can help. Start a 7-day free trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

FAQs

What is TikTok LIVE?

A TikTok Live is a real-time broadcast that happens on a TikTok app. It’s a great way to interact with your audience in real-time, build trust, and increase engagement. You might even go live with other TikTok users to try and get exposed to their audiences and grow your audience as well. Unlike TikTok videos, lives tend to be longer, not scripted, and informal, which is the main appeal to many people as they get to see their favorite people and brands in a new light.

Why can’t I go live on TikTok?

You usually can't go live because your account doesn't meet the requirements yet: 1,000 followers (may vary by region) and age 18 or older. There are a few other reasons why you might not be able to go live on TikTok. Before getting too concerned, check to see if there is any kind of outage happening for TikTok.

Can anyone go live on TikTok?

Not everyone. You need to meet TikTok's minimum age and follower requirements and follow the Community Guidelines.

Can you go live on TikTok with 500 followers?

Usually not. The standard requirement is 1,000 followers, but TikTok says it may vary across regions, so tap the + button and check whether LIVE appears for your account.

Do you need to be 18 to go live on TikTok?

Yes. TikTok's help center says you must be at least 18 to go LIVE, and 18 (19 in South Korea) to send or receive Gifts.

Key terms

LIVE: TikTok's real-time streaming feature that lets you broadcast to your followers and interact with them as you go.

LIVE Studio: TikTok's free desktop app for streaming to TikTok LIVE from a computer, available for Windows and macOS.

LIVE access: Eligibility to use LIVE, which requires meeting TikTok's follower and age requirements for your region.

Gifts: Virtual items viewers send during a LIVE that hosts can exchange for cash, available to users 18 and older (19 in South Korea).

Stream key: A private code TikTok generates so third-party encoding software can broadcast to your TikTok LIVE instead of the official LIVE Studio app.

TL;DR: To sell on Instagram, switch to a business account and set up a shop and catalog in Meta's Commerce Manager, then tag products in your posts, Reels and Stories. Since September 2025, shops on Facebook and Instagram use website checkout, so buyers browse on Instagram and pay on your website. Visual products like clothes, accessories, makeup, skincare, workout gear, art, food and furniture tend to sell best. Meta's Commerce Policies don't allow shops to list downloadable digital content or digital subscriptions, so courses and downloads sell through your bio link, Stories links and DMs instead.

If you’re looking to grow your business and add additional revenue streams, look no further than the popular photo-sharing social media platform Instagram. With Instagram’s shopping tools and 3 billion monthly users, you can show products to buyers where they already spend time, then send them to your own website to pay.

Throughout this article, learn more about the benefits of selling on Instagram, how to get started, and 10 ideas of what sells the most on Instagram.

Benefits of selling on Instagram

Not sure why you should bother with Instagram? Trust us, there are quite a few benefits. Here are the top three you need to consider.

Reach your target audience

Instagram has 3 billion monthly active users, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in September 2025. With a user base that large, you can bet your target audience is likely there.

If you have product photos or mockups, Instagram is the perfect platform to share those on. Due to its visual nature, product photos and videos fit right in, and sharing them can be a great way to reach an even wider audience of potential customers.

Create another revenue stream for your business

Because you can create an entire shop with Instagram, you’re able to turn the social platform into an entirely new revenue stream for your business. Buyers can browse your shop, collections and product pages inside the app. When they're ready to buy, Instagram sends them to your website to complete the purchase.

People are using Instagram to research products

Many people browse Instagram to discover products, read comments and watch Reels before they buy. That means your audience might be shopping around for a product like yours while they scroll.

Instagram shop requirements: What you need to sell on Instagram

If you’re interested in selling physical products through an Instagram shop, there are just a few eligibility requirements to keep in mind.

• You must have an Instagram business account (not a personal account) and a Commerce Manager account.
• Your account must comply with Instagram’s Terms of Use and Community Guidelines.
• You must only share listings of products that are listed on your actual website.
• You may need to verify that you own your website's domain.
• Third party listings from sites like Amazon aren’t applicable for Instagram shopping.
• You must be located in one of the countries where Instagram shops are supported.
• You must “demonstrate trustworthiness.” Essentially, you must have an active, authentic, established presence on the platform.
• You must share accurate information about your products, pricing, etc.
• Refund/return policies must be clear and transparent.
• Your products must follow Meta's Commerce Policies, which don't allow listings for downloadable digital content, digital subscriptions or digital accounts.

If you meet these criteria, you can go ahead and start setting up your Instagram shop. Note that you’ll need to create a catalog in Commerce Manager before you can start linking products to your Instagram shop.

How to sell on Instagram

Want to start generating even more sales for your business? Let’s walk through the steps of getting your Instagram shop set up and how to let customers know you’re open for business.

1. Set up your Instagram shop

Step one is actually setting up your Instagram shop. As mentioned, to do this, you’ll need to have an Instagram business account and a Commerce Manager account.

Once you’ve gotten that taken care of, follow these steps:

1. Set up your catalog with Meta’s Commerce Manager. This means that if you so choose, you can also sell via your Facebook page and not just only on your Instagram.
2. Upload your inventory. You’ll need to add images, descriptions, links, pricing info, and a SKU number if applicable for each product. If you have a Shopify shop, Meta can automatically sync your products to your Instagram catalog, so you don't have to add each one by hand.
3. Set up your checkout URL. Since September 2025, every shop on Facebook and Instagram sends buyers to your website to pay, so make sure each product link opens the right product page.
4. Create collections to organize your products and make your Instagram shop look more like a real online store.
5. Submit your shop for review. Instagram checks your account and shop against its commerce eligibility requirements before your shop goes live.

Once you’ve taken these steps, you can start promoting and selling your products on Instagram.

2. Tag products in your Instagram content

Now that your shop is set up, it’s time to start tagging products from your Instagram shop in your posts, stories, and reels. This way, when someone sees a photo of a product they love, all they have to do is tap it to view the product and head to your website to buy it.

Here’s an example of what this could look like on your Instagram posts:

Tag just a single product or tag several, depending on what’s pictured. It’s easy to do. When you’re creating a new post, the “Tag products” option will appear on the screen when you’re adding your caption and other final details before you publish. In Stories, use the product sticker instead.

3. Create a wide variety of content

You can feature and tag products in your regular Instagram posts, your reels, and your stories, so make sure you’re creating a wide variety of content and taking advantage of this feature.

Meet your audience where they are. Some go through stories of the accounts they follow, others scroll through reels, and others simply scroll through their feed or the explore page. Make sure you’re creating different types of content that features your products to give your audience an even bigger chance of discovering them.

4. Partner with influencers

Work with influencers in your industry to further promote your products and your brand. You can even give the specific accounts you work with permission to tag your products in their posts, creating a simple process for those introduced to your business via influencers to easily purchase your products.

5. Share user-generated content

If you’re lucky enough to have existing customers take photos and videos of your products, ask them if you can repurpose them onto your own feed. User-generated content (or UGC) helps create an authentic vibe that doesn’t feel like marketing content. Integrate as much UGC as you can into your strategy, and of course, don’t forget to tag your products in each one.

6. Run Instagram ads

Finally, consider allocating some of your marketing budget towards Instagram ads. You can still tag products in these ads, but you can also create a call-to-action to your full Instagram shop, enabling ad viewers to start shopping around.

There are a number of different types of ads with various objectives. Play around with different ad types until you discover the ones that get you the best results.

What sells the most on Instagram: 10 ideas

The products that tend to sell best on Instagram are visual ones that look good in a photo or a Reel, such as clothes, accessories, makeup, skincare and workout gear. Digital products like courses and downloads sell too, but through a link to your own checkout rather than a shop.

You might already have an established business with products to sell. But if not, you may be looking for inspiration to get started. Here are 10 ideas of things you can sell with Instagram’s shopping tools and your own website.

1. Clothes

Clothes and apparel are a common product sold on Instagram. Tons of online boutiques take advantage of Instagram shopping to increase sales and reach a wider audience of customers.

Here’s an example of boutique Dress Up and its Instagram shop. The store is even offering a 20% discount on select products through Instagram and has categorized products to make it easier to shop on the app.

2. Accessories

Accessories, jewelry, sunglasses, shoes, etc., is another great product to sell on Instagram. You can sell handmade jewelry. There are many polymer clay and metal working brands selling handmade jewelry on Instagram.

Or, you can go a more traditional route, like Ring Concierge below. The brand creates fine jewelry and sells it on their website, while also creating a shop on Instagram. This makes it easy for them to tag products directly in their content, increasing sales.

3. Makeup

Instagram is a common place for people to look for makeup inspiration, learn more about how to better apply makeup, and, of course, purchase makeup products. This means selling your makeup products on Instagram can help bring in more sales, whether you have an established brand or want to create your own products.

Here’s an example of what your shop could look like from Tarte Cosmetics:

4. Skincare

Skincare products cover a wide range of options: face masks, face washes, creams, moisturizers, and more. You can even include hair care products here if you’d like.

Here’s an example of a shop on Instagram selling skincare products:

5. Workout gear

Workout gear, yoga mats, fitness clothes, fitness products, protein powder, etc., are all great products to sell on Instagram. Many users love to peruse the app for workout ideas and motivation, so putting your products in front of that audience can help build a larger customer base.

Here’s an example of fitness company Bala’s Instagram shop:

6. Art

Are you an artist? While many artists have one-off drops, others have consistent products available. If you’re one of the latter, consider offering your regular products via Instagram’s shop.

Here’s an example of what this could look like from artist Ashley Longshore:

7. Online courses

While the past few examples we’ve covered have all been physical products, you can sell digital products on Instagram, too! Instagram shops don't allow downloadable digital content or digital subscriptions, so you promote courses in your content and send followers to your course sales page. Put the link in your bio, add link stickers to Stories, and answer questions in DMs. Our guide to building an Instagram sales funnel walks through each step, and you can host the course itself on an online course platform.

8. Digital downloads

Another digital product to sell is various types of digital downloads. Checklists, guides, workbooks, templates, etc. These are very popular products, and you can easily sell more of them by promoting them on Instagram and linking to a digital downloads checkout on your own site. For more ideas, see our list of digital products to sell.

9. Food

Food can be a tricky product to sell online, but many bakeries and other companies have figured it out. Maybe you’re selling hot sauce, cereal, baked goods, or something else that can easily package and travel well. Consider offering your products via Instagram!

Take a look at this Instagram shop, The Marshmallow Co. The brand has listed a number of types of marshmallows for sale that its customers can easily buy after finding them on Instagram.

10. Furniture

And last, but certainly not least, is furniture! While bulky, if you have a website that you use to sell furniture, you can easily translate that to an Instagram shop.

Here’s an example of popular furniture brand West Elm’s Instagram shop:

How to sell digital products on Instagram

Courses and downloads can't be listed in an Instagram shop, but Instagram is still a good place to find buyers for them. Here's how creators sell digital products from Instagram:

1. Host the product on your own site. Build your course, coaching offer or download on a platform with its own checkout, so every sale lands in your account.
2. Make your bio link do the selling. Point it at your sales page, or at a simple link page if you sell more than one thing. See how to use Instagram's 5 links in bio.
3. Teach in your content. Short tips in Reels and carousels show followers what your course covers, then a Story link sticker sends them to the sales page.
4. Offer paid extras to your followers. Instagram Subscriptions let followers pay monthly for exclusive content, which can lead into a full course.
5. For more tactics, see our Instagram marketing tips to increase course sales.

If you're ready to turn Instagram followers into paying customers, you need somewhere to host and sell the course, download or coaching offer you're promoting. Start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

Frequently asked questions

Can I sell directly through Instagram?

Partly. You can list products in an Instagram shop and tag them in posts, Reels and Stories, but since September 2025 buyers complete the purchase on your website, not inside Instagram.

Can you sell digital products on Instagram?

Yes, but not through an Instagram shop. Meta's Commerce Policies don't allow listings for downloadable digital content or digital subscriptions, so you promote courses and downloads in your content and link to your own checkout.

Key terms

Instagram shop: A storefront built inside your Instagram business profile where you list products for people to browse and tag in your content.

Commerce Manager: Meta's tool for setting up and managing the product catalog that powers your Instagram and Facebook shops.

Product tagging: Adding clickable tags to products in posts, Reels and Stories so viewers can tap through to a product page.

Website checkout: The purchase flow Instagram now uses for every shop, where buyers complete payment on your own site rather than inside the app.

Bio link: A link in your Instagram bio that points followers to your own sales page, useful for selling products like courses and downloads that can't be listed in a shop.

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TL;DR: The best business ideas for women match skills you already have and need little money to start, such as online courses, coaching, freelance writing, virtual assistance and social media management. Home-based options with low startup costs include online courses, blogging and affiliate marketing. Service businesses like interior design, personal training and wedding planning trade time for income, while courses and digital products keep selling after you create them once. Women now own more than 14 million US businesses and employ over 10.7 million workers, according to the SBA Office of Advocacy, and this guide covers 46 ways to join them.

Have you always dreamed of being an entrepreneur and want to know the best business ideas for women? Or have you experienced a recent layoff and want to explore owning your own business?

Women-owned businesses drive economic growth across America. According to the SBA Office of Advocacy, women now own more than 14 million businesses and employ over 10.7 million workers nationwide. This growth continues steadily, as women-owned businesses have demonstrated nearly twice the growth rate of their male counterparts from 2019 to 2023, with notable gains among businesses owned by women of color.

Now is the time to join successful women entrepreneurs. From e-commerce ventures to creative freelancing and service businesses, this guide will walk you through 46 profitable business ideas that will inspire anyone looking to establish themselves in the digital creator economy.

So, if you are one of them and are looking to leave your full-time job for good or simply want to make extra money from a brick and mortar, or home-based business, we'll cover business ideas in the following categories:

• Small business ideas for women
• Online business ideas for women
• Entrepreneur ideas for women
• Side hustles for women
• Fun business ideas for women
• Home-based business ideas for women

Small business ideas for women

1. Online course

Creating and selling online courses is one of the best online business ideas for women. You can create an online course on a variety of topics, from wellness to business, and make money sharing your knowledge on a topic with other people.

Online course platforms like ours bundle the course builder, checkout and tax handling in one plan, so you can go from signup to a live, purchasable course without code. Plans start at $29/month on annual billing (Starter carries a 7.5% transaction fee, 0% from Builder up), and you have many different tools to help you create landing pages to sell and promote your course. Start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

2. Interior designer

You can start your own interior design business if you have an eye for design. If you always get compliments when someone visits your home, it’s a sign that you have good taste and skills in decorating. So, utilize them and offer interior design consulting, either in-person or online.

Now is the time to start. According to the American Society of Interior Designers, the total number of interior designers, both employed and self-employed, has reached nearly 128,800 in 2024, increasing 4.1% year-to-year. Women make up about 84.2% of the interior design workforce, according to Data USA, making it one of the most female-dominated professional industries.

School of Design

3. Yoga instructor

The global yoga market was valued at $127.0 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow 9.9% a year from 2026 to 2033, according to Grand View Research Yoga Market Report.

One in six Americans report practicing yoga for a variety of reasons, including stress reduction, improved flexibility, overall fitness, and mental health benefits. According to a 2024 report from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, 16.9% of American adults practiced yoga in the past 12 months CDC, with participants citing numerous health benefits. That steady demand makes yoga a viable business for wellness-focused entrepreneurs.

Yoga certification and credentials

Several respected organizations offer online certification programs:

• Yoga Alliance RYT-200 certification remains the industry standard, with programs ranging from $1,500-$3,000
• International Yoga Federation offers globally recognized certifications
• CorePower Yoga provides certification programs with strong business training components

Most foundational certifications can be completed in 3-6 months through flexible online learning formats, making this career transition accessible even while maintaining your current job.

Multiple revenue streams

The most successful yoga entrepreneurs diversify their income through multiple channels:

• Studio teaching: Partner with established studios to build your reputation ($25-$50 per class)
• Private sessions: Offer personalized instruction ($75-$150 per hour)
• Online courses: Create pre-recorded or live-streamed classes
• Corporate wellness: Develop corporate yoga programs (average $150-$300 per session)
• Retreats and workshops: Host specialized events ($500-$3,000+ per participant)

According to Indeed, the average pay for a yoga instructor is $34.86 per hour, based on 3.7k salaries reported over the past 36 months.

By implementing targeted small business marketing strategies and reliable platform solutions for digital offerings, you can build a sustainable yoga business that provides both personal fulfillment and financial independence.

4. Jewelry brand

Have a passion for jewelry? Always get compliments on pieces you’re wearing and could spend hours shopping for just the right necklace? Then you might consider starting a jewelry brand. You can either take a course and learn to create jewelry yourself. Or you can stick with design alone and outsource the production to professionals.

The global jewelry market is projected to reach $629.4 billion by 2034, growing 5.7% a year from 2026, and handcrafted jewelry is especially popular in North America and Europe.

5. A personal trainer

If you love fitness and the gym, you could get a certification and start working as a personal trainer. It’s fairly easy to get certified in most countries, and you can start by getting clients through friends and family until you build a regular roster of clients.

The personal training industry was worth $39.7 billion globally in 2024, with a growth rate of 6.5% annually through 2031.

Here are three ways a personal trainer could increase their income:

1. Creating digital products and online courses allows trainers to generate revenue that runs without trading their time through specialized workout programs and nutrition guides. These digital assets continue earning revenue 24/7 without requiring your physical presence.
2. Small group training sessions let trainers work with multiple clients and increase hourly earnings. Instead of earning $50-100 per one-on-one session, trainers can earn $100-240 per hour with 5-8 participants paying reduced individual rates.
3. Obtaining specialized certifications in high-demand niches like post-rehabilitation, prenatal fitness, or medical conditions allows trainers to command premium rates. These specializations create unique value propositions and often facilitate healthcare referral partnerships.

6. Nutritionist

Getting a certification for being a nutritionist might take longer, but it’s also a great option if you love food and a healthy lifestyle. You can find clients through friends and family and work with them face-to-face or offer online coaching.

7. Stylist

If you are passionate about fashion, why not start your own styling business? Many people are looking for styling advice, and you can start by offering free consultations until you build a reputation.

8. Personal chef

Personal chefs are becoming more popular in large cities where busy professionals don’t have time to cook but still want something nutritious and delicious. You can find clients through friends and family, working with people locally.

According to Grand View Research, the global personal chef services market was valued at $16.62 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow 6.7% a year from 2025 to 2030. The growth is driven by increasing demand for customized meal plans as consumers become more health-conscious.

9. Esthetician

The beauty industry was worth USD 552.0 billion in 2025, according to IMARC Group, and the demand for various beauty treatments is growing every year. If you love taking care of your skin, you might want to consider getting a certification as an esthetician and opening your own beauty salon.

10. Make-up artists

Another beauty-related business idea is becoming a make-up artist. You can do make-up without a certificate, but you can get one in any beauty school if you want. Start with doing make-up on friends and family and get referrals that way.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global makeup market was valued at $45.95 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow 6.72% a year from 2026 to 2034.

Online business ideas for women

11. Freelance illustrator

If you have always loved to draw and create art as a hobby, you might want to consider becoming a freelance illustrator. You can work with ad agencies, create ads, work with authors to create book covers or simply take on commission work with brands.

According to Linearity, the Illustration Agency Service market is expected to grow from $16.5 billion in 2023 to $26.3 billion in 2030, at a CAGR of 9.7%.

12. Freelance graphic designer

As a graphic designer, you can create brand identities and website designs for corporate or private clients and work with ad and marketing agencies to help them design promotional materials.

The largest proportion of freelancers specialize in art and design.

13. Ghostwriter

If you have always wanted to be a published author and write a book but want to remain anonymous, you could start a ghostwriting business. You can ghostwrite blog posts, articles, books, and everything in between from the comfort of your own home.

14. Video editor

If you love filming and editing videos, then starting a video editing business is a good way to go. Video editing skills are in demand, so you’ll be able to find a ton of work, commercial and private (working with Youtube creators or other small entrepreneurs).

15. Podcast producer

Podcasting is also on the rise, and all podcast shows need audio editors and producers. If you have the skills or want to take an online course and learn the skill, then you might consider starting a podcast production company.

16. Freelance web developer

Building websites is a lucrative business idea for you if you have a passion for IT and coding. Every business needs an online presence, and with the technologies always changing, they will always need someone to help them build the perfect website.

Entrepreneur ideas for women

17. PR agency

If you work in public relations or are passionate about working with people, then starting your PR agency might be a good business idea. You can work with individual influencers or brands, helping them craft their identities and grow their businesses.

18. Membership site

A membership site charges members a monthly or yearly fee for ongoing content, such as new lessons, templates or live Q&As. It turns one-off sales into recurring revenue, and it pairs well with a course you already sell. See our guide to creating a membership site, or set one up with our memberships.

19. Travel agency

If you love to travel, you might want to consider starting a travel agency. Travel agents scour the world for the best holiday destinations and deals, put together holiday packages for different occasions and work with people to ensure they have the best vacation experience.

You will have to connect hotels and local tour guides with tourists, so it might be beneficial to be familiar with the country or even speak the language to ensure you can get the most authentic offers and experiences for your clients.

20. Coach

If you enjoy communicating with people and helping them find purpose and a path in life, you might consider becoming a life coach. Life coaches work with people, helping them navigate certain areas of their life. You can be focused on productivity, time management, confidence, dating, relationships, body confidence, and more. You can sell coaching sessions alongside a course with our coaching tools.

21. Freelance photographer

Freelance photography is a highly sought-after business skill. If you have photography skills or have always wanted to learn photography, you can easily find work taking photos for brands worldwide.

22. Content creator

If you have always dreamed of creating and sharing content on social media, then content creation might be the right business idea for you. Content creators can work with brands directly, creating content for their platforms, like BuzzFeed.

Or, you can go solo and grow your social media following by posting online and building your audience. Content creators have many different ways to monetize their business, from affiliate marketing to brand sponsorships, and the sky is the limit when it comes to how much you can make as a content creator.

One downside to this business is how often the social media landscape changes. As a content creator, you’ll always have to be ready to adapt and learn new platforms and how to utilize them for your business.

23. Online store

Ecommerce is a popular women-owned business idea. You can start an online store in a few steps with Shopify and sell anything, from clothing, and jewelry, to kitchen appliances. And social media is one of the easiest places to promote your online store and get more eyes on your products.

24. Wedding planning

Wedding planning is a lucrative business idea. As a wedding planner, you’ll work with clients to help them prepare for their weddings, helping them find the best venue and catering, send out invitations and make sure that the program for the event goes smoothly.

You can organize weddings locally where you live. Or, you might opt for starting a destination wedding planning business, planning celebrations abroad.

Side hustles for women

25. Open an Amazon store

Selling products on Amazon is a very lucrative business idea. You can pick out products from wholesalers, create a store on Amazon, and sell them for a profit.

26. Transcription

You can find transcription work from home. If you’re a fast typer and don’t mind repetitive admin work, then this side hustle is perfect for you. You can find companies hiring and applying without any prior experience or certification needed.

27. Teach English

If you love language and teaching people, then you might want to consider teaching people English online. There are companies that allow you to register with them and find people, or you might put up an ad on Facebook or Craigslist and find clients yourself.

28. Tutor

If you have a love for math, science, or another subject, you might start a tutoring side hustle, either in person or online. You can tutor small kids or teenagers, depending on your knowledge levels.

29. Dog walking

Dog walking can be a great side hustle for animal lovers. You can start by asking your neighbors or putting up local ads to let people know about your services.

30. Consulting

If you work in business, finance, IT, or any other sector but want an extra way to make money, you might consider doing consulting on the side. A lot of firms hire outside consultants and pay top dollar for their services.

31. Sell art

All the artists have the opportunity to sell their art online, either through social media or places like Etsy. If you’re passionate about painting, put up your art for sale to make extra money.

32. Customer service

Remote customer service work lets you answer emails, chats and calls for companies from home. Many companies hire part-time support agents, and experience in retail or hospitality carries over well.

Fun business ideas for women

33. Candlemaking

Candles are extremely popular everywhere. You can create themed candles for every season, book-related candles for book lovers, or massage oil candles for couples and sell them on Etsy.

34. Organization expert

If your home is always organized and your favorite time to pass the time by organizing your home, you might want to consider starting a professional home organization business. You can have fun helping other people organize their lives and homes.

35. Podcast

Podcasting can be a great business idea if you have a passion for media. The demand for audio content is growing, brands are always looking for new podcasts to advertise on. And some podcasts are even able to build large enough audiences that they’re legitimate multi-million dollar businesses.

36. Start a Youtube channel

YouTuber is one of the most popular career choices for the younger generation. And not without reason. Top YouTube creators report earning millions from turning their channels into businesses.

You are free to choose whatever topic you’d want your channel to revolve around, and as it grows, you can monetize it in various ways like affiliate marketing, AdSense, brand deals, and more.

37. Vintage reseller

Reselling clothing and vintage furniture on eBay or Facebook Marketplace can turn into a profitable business. One of the best examples is the clothing store Nasty Gal, which started out as an eBay store selling second-hand vintage clothing.

You can find stock to sell in your local second-hand and charity shops and find the best deal on furniture. You might want to look for local yard sales.

38. Voice actress

Narrating audiobooks is a great business idea for those with a pleasant voice. The demand for audiobooks is growing amongst book lovers each year. You can start with companies like ACX or start your own company offering voice-acting services for authors.

Home-based business ideas for women

39. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative online business models. It’s a form of marketing when you make money by earning a commission for recommending products and people using your affiliate link to purchase the products.

Most companies have an affiliate marketing program available that you can sign up for direct and start earning a commission. Alternatively, you can join an affiliate network.

40. Blogging

Blogging is a perfect home-based business idea for stay-at-home moms or anyone looking for freedom at work. You can blog about anything you want, there is a niche for most topics, and you can always monetize your blog, even with a smaller audience.

41. Proofreader

Proofreaders work with publishing houses, independent authors, and corporate clients to help them make sure their written content is free from grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and formatting errors. If you have attention to detail, then proofreading might be a good business idea.

42. A virtual assistant

If you’re looking for a business idea where you would have an opportunity of working from home, then starting out a virtual assistant business might be for you. Virtual assistants do a variety of tasks like invoices, emails, agenda management, social media management, and more.

43. Freelance editor

If you have a good grasp of the English language and have attention to detail, you can start a freelance editing business. Freelance editors work with bloggers, corporate clients, and authors to make sure that written content is grammatically correct or help develop structure and plot and ensure its quality.

44. Freelance writer

As a freelance writer, you’ll work with a range of different clients in writing blog content, product descriptions, website copy, ebooks, white papers, magazine articles, SEO writing, and much more. Freelance writers can earn anything between $10 to $1,000+ per piece of content, depending on their skill set, the industry they’re in, and experience.

45. Sell on Etsy

Etsy is a popular marketplace for small businesses. You can open an online store and sell various things without the fuss of managing an online store. Anything from vintage clothing to handcrafted bowls and digital downloads can be sold on Etsy, so you have many options to choose from.

46. Social media management

Social media management is the type of business that gives you flexibility and allows you to choose how you want to run it. You can work with individual brands or creators to help them manage their social media accounts. Or you can create an agency where you employ social media managers who manage various social media accounts for different clients.

Whichever idea fits your skills and schedule, turning what you know into a course or coaching program can turn a one-off side hustle into income that keeps coming in. Start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

FAQs

What is the best business for a woman to start?

The best business for a woman to start is the one that she is passionate about and has expertise in. One of these two things is key to building a successful, profitable business and ensuring its longevity. Building a business from the ground up can be lonely and stressful. It might take a while to see any profit, and depending on the idea, it might require a lot of investment, money, or time-wise. So, if you want to start a business, make sure that you are ready to commit to the idea long-term and be patient with it before you see any results.

Which business is good for beginners?

Any business that doesn’t require a large monetary investment or the investment is small enough that you won’t have to take on debt just to get started. Most businesses that fit this criterion are online businesses like selling digital templates, online courses, and affiliate marketing.

Alternatively, you might start a business by utilizing your skills like writing, or editing, because they don’t require any upfront cost. Also, starting a YouTube channel or becoming a social media influencer as you can do most filming and editing with your phone without needing to invest in professional equipment. For more options, see our list of low-cost, high-profit business ideas.

Which business is best for women from home?

The best home-based businesses need little startup money and use skills you already have. Online courses, coaching, freelance writing, virtual assistance, social media management and digital downloads can all run from home with a laptop and an internet connection.

What is the easiest home-based business to start?

Service businesses built on a skill you already have are usually the easiest to start, because there is nothing to build first. Freelance writing, proofreading, virtual assistance and tutoring can start with one client. Courses and digital downloads take more setup, but they can keep selling after you create them.

Key terms

Side hustle: A small, flexible business or gig you run alongside a full-time job or other income, often part-time and low-risk to start.

Freelance: Working for multiple clients on a project basis rather than being employed by one company, common in writing, design, editing and photography.

Affiliate marketing: Earning a commission by recommending another company's product or service through a unique link, without having to create or ship anything yourself.

Home-based business: Any business you can run from home with minimal equipment, such as a laptop and an internet connection, instead of a physical storefront or office.

Membership site: A website that charges members a recurring monthly or yearly fee for ongoing access to content or services.

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Stefan Kunz can fill a room. Before he recorded a single lesson, he was teaching hand lettering in person to sold-out workshops in New York, Los Angeles, London, and beyond.

Reaching the rest of his audience meant teaching online, and the first online setup he saw up close looked complicated. Stefan taught a guest course for a fellow lettering educator whose school ran on WordPress, Vimeo, and password protection, all wired together by hand. The arrangement delivered the course. Keeping it running took constant attention.

Stefan wanted the opposite of that. He went looking for one place to build, sell, and run his courses, even if a packaged platform meant giving up some custom control. A recommendation from his friend and podcast co-host Lauren Hom pointed him to Teachable, and he has stayed there ever since.

“It felt like a platform that would let me focus on creating and teaching rather than managing technology.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Related: How to make money selling courses right now

Stefan's Teachable story at a glance

The turning point

Stefan never set out to become a teacher. His path ran through filmmaking, then wedding photography, then hand lettering, each craft picked up on his own and turned into a living.

Lettering took off as a trend, and people kept asking him the same question about how he did it.

Answering that question in person became a business of its own. 

In 2019 he hired an assistant, cleaned out his studio, and ran his first lettering workshop off a big chalk wall in his own office, with pizza for about fourteen people. Demand kept showing up, so the rooms kept getting bigger.

By the time recording crossed his mind, he had taught hundreds of students face to face. He understood that whatever platform he picked would carry all of that online, which raised the stakes on choosing well.

How Stefan found Teachable

That first online teaching, the guest course for a fellow lettering educator, ran on a custom mix of WordPress, Vimeo, and password protection stitched together piece by piece. 

The setup delivered the lessons, and it also showed Stefan how much upkeep a hand-built system demands.

He wanted one place that handled the whole job, and he was willing to give up some custom control to get it. When Lauren Hom, his friend and Striving Artist podcast co-host, told him she was running her own courses on Teachable and loving it, the platform went straight to the top of his list.

A closer look confirmed the fit. The course builder, student management, comments, and online course tools all sat in one place, with a setup simple enough to learn in an afternoon. What stood out most was speed, since payments and delivery already worked together, so he could put his attention on the course instead of the connections between separate tools.

One detail settled it for him. Stefan could build his entire course before paying anything, which let him confirm everything worked before he committed. He created his first course, an online version of his lettering workshop, in a few days.

The feature he reaches for most today solves a problem that used to eat his evenings. Teaching a global audience, he once uploaded every video to separate services to make transcripts and subtitles by hand. Teachable now generates them for him, which feeds the kind of student experience that keeps international learners moving through a course.

“Being able to upload a video and have transcripts and translations generated automatically saves an incredible amount of time and helps me make my courses accessible to students around the world.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Stefan started with Teachable and has stayed. Switching platforms later, he points out, is no small task, which made getting the first choice right worth the care he gave it.

Payments and a global student base

When Stefan started, having payments built into the platform mattered. He could open enrollment without wiring up a separate processor, which kept his attention on the course itself.

His needs changed as the business grew, and the platform gave him room to adjust. Stefan now connects his own Stripe and PayPal accounts through Teachable while keeping the built-in option available for whenever he wants it.

“As my business expanded, I had more flexibility to customize parts of my setup, including connecting my own payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Those options matter more for someone teaching across borders. Stefan's students reach nearly every continent, and Teachable Payments, powered by Stripe, handles tax and local payment methods across dozens of countries. For a creator selling to that kind of audience, the platform manages each market so the creator does not have to.

What Stefan looks for in a platform

Stefan is the first to say there is no single right platform for everyone. Predicting how a business will grow is hard at the start, so he tells new creators to pick a tool that can grow with them.

“I would highly recommend choosing a platform that can grow with you.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

The economics deserve early attention too. Giving up a small percentage feels minor in the beginning, and it adds up as the numbers get bigger.

“When you are just starting, giving up a small percentage may not seem significant. But as your business grows, every percentage point starts to matter.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

The last thing he weighs is presentation. How a course looks and feels is part of a creator's brand, so Stefan wants a platform that lets him organize content, shape the student experience, and use tools like drip release to deliver a course the way he pictured it.

Take action

• Choose for where you are headed, not only where you are today. A platform that adds room as you grow saves you a painful move later.
• Read the fee and revenue-share terms before you commit. A percentage that feels small now grows with every sale you add.
• Treat the course experience as part of your brand. Pick tools that let you organize, customize, and pace the content the way you want students to see it.

Stefan's strategies for building a sold-out course business

Stefan has launched more than 25 courses since 2019, and along the way he built a way of working that any creator with an audience can follow. The core of it is simple. He proves that people want something before he spends weeks building it.

Strategy 1: Sell it before you build it

Stefan learned this the hard way. Early on he poured months into courses he felt sure would land, then watched some of them open to near silence.

“You should sell first and then build it later. If it sells really well, then you build it. If it does not sell, what is the point of building it?” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

His model came from outside the course world. A sportswear brand he follows released a limited shoe by inviting people to enter their payment details for a chance to buy a pair, which told the brand exactly how much demand existed before it produced anything.

Stefan runs his launches on the same logic. For his animation course, he set up a tool that sent a waitlist link to anyone who commented the word animate on his videos. Around 3,000 people signed up within a couple of weeks, and that list became his proof.

“I had to have around 3,000 people on the waitlist to get 250 students. That conversion is still really good.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Take action

• Build a waitlist before you build the course. A list of people asking for the thing is the clearest signal that making it is worth your time.
• Watch the ratio, not only the raw number. Stefan plans around roughly 3,000 sign-ups for 250 sales, and a higher price needs a longer list.

Strategy 2: Grow it in person before you take it online

Stefan began in the smallest way possible, with a chalk wall and a pizza order.

His first workshop ran in his own office, with room for about fourteen people, and he taught it across a weekend before running it again. From there he booked a thirty-seat space, then back-to-back weekends in New York and Los Angeles with 120 seats to fill, followed by London, the Philippines, and India.

By the time recording crossed his mind, he had taught more than 300 students in person. He knew the questions they asked, the parts that confused them, and the moments things clicked.

“Start small, understand how it works, build up, and you can grow it piece by piece.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Take action

• Test your material live before you film it. Each in-person round shows you what to cut, what to charge, and where students get stuck.
• Let real rooms refine the content. A version recorded after several live runs beats a first draft shot in isolation.

Strategy 3: Run the workshop, bootcamp, evergreen sequence

Stefan rarely changes his order of operations. He runs a live workshop first, turns it into a multi-week bootcamp next, and records the evergreen course last, once the material has proven itself several times.

The bootcamp stage is where Teachable's comment feature earns its place. In his weekly animation bootcamps, students post their homework and Stefan replies with video feedback, something a single-day workshop never had room for. The multi-week format makes space for that exchange, and the work students hand in gets noticeably better.

“Like a band performing the same show at different stadiums, I have refined it with every iteration.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

By the time he records the evergreen version, real students have pressure-tested every lesson. The final course is the polished result of all those rounds.

Take action

• Treat your course as a live act before you treat it as a recording. Workshops and cohorts are rehearsals that make the evergreen version stronger.
• Use a comment or community feature to collect homework and reply with feedback. The back and forth turns a one-day lesson into real progress.

Strategy 4: Keep the launch simple enough to repeat

Stefan compares a good course to a football team with one play it runs perfectly. The other side knows exactly what is coming and still fails to stop it.

“They were so good at that one single play that nobody could beat them.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

He has watched his own launches grow so elaborate that even his team lost track of the plan. The fix was always the same. He stripped the launch back until everyone understood it again.

Simple plans are the repeatable ones. A launch you can run cleanly the second and third time is worth more than a clever one you manage to pull off once.

Take action

• If your launch plan is too complicated for your team to follow, cut it back. The version you can repeat beats the version that works once.
• Write your launch sequence down in plain steps. Anything you struggle to explain quickly is a sign to simplify.

Strategy 5: Teach the method underneath

Plenty of creators teach students to copy one finished piece, step by step, which produces good imitations and little else. Stefan teaches the thinking underneath instead, the principles he uses to make any piece, and he gets students to a first win as fast as possible because an early result keeps them going.

He has a phrase for the balance.

“People want the quick win. So I try to hide the vegetables in the food.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

The quick win is the food, and the principles are the vegetables. Students arrive for the result they saw on Instagram and leave able to make work of their own.

Take action

• Give students a fast, satisfying win, then teach the principles underneath it. They stay for the result and keep the method.
• Aim to make the first win quick. Stefan treats time to a student's first result as a number worth lowering with every version.

Expert corner: staying an artist while you teach

A common worry among creators is that teaching will pull them away from their craft. Stefan found the reverse to be true.

“You try to figure things out yourself, and then there comes the next level. Now you have to teach it to someone else, and that is when you learn whether you really understood it.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Explaining a technique forces him to understand why it works, which sharpens his own work. When he shares a method and watches other artists run with it, the pressure to find the next idea pushes him forward.

That loop is why he keeps taking client projects alongside teaching. His wife, a primary school teacher, pointed out that he learns the most when he solves real problems for paying clients. One recent brand project asked for a painterly texture effect he had never made before. He spent hours working it out, and now it is one more thing he can teach.

His path has run from lettering to Procreate to animation, and each new area started as a client challenge or a personal experiment. The teaching always follows the making.

What Stefan's reach says

Stefan prefers to let his reach tell the story rather than share revenue figures.

His brand animations have passed 400 million views, and his audience across social platforms sits above 2.1 million people. More than 8,000 students have come through his courses and workshops, with over 1,000 in his animation bootcamp alone. He has worked with brands including Coca-Cola, Apple, and Adobe, and he has taught students on nearly every continent.

For an artist who started by adding words to his Instagram photos, the pattern holds steady. He keeps making the work, and the teaching grows out of it.

Stefan is one of many creators using Teachable to reach students far beyond their home country. Elisa Azoum grew French Mornings to more than 2,850 language students across dozens of countries on the same platform, and Amie Tollefsrud built an eight-figure course business on it. The pattern repeats: real expertise, a clear program, and a platform that travels with the student.

Looking ahead

Stefan's focus right now is client work, which has kept him busier this year than ever. He treats every project as research.

The lessons stack up quietly. How to use AI as a real tool in animation rather than a shortcut, how to build a studio camera setup, how to edit a video that travels well. Each one is a future course waiting for the right moment.

When the season turns and he has room to teach again, the material will be ready. The order will stay the same as always. Prove the demand, run it live, then record it.

The wider market is moving in his direction. Goldman Sachs Research projects the creator economy could reach $480 billion by 2027, roughly double its 2023 size. Creators who prove demand before they build, the way Stefan does, are the ones ready to claim a share of it.

What to do next

See Stefan's work: Follow his animation on Instagram and YouTube, explore his Teachable school, or browse his full portfolio at stefankunz.com. You can also hear him on the Striving Artist podcast.

Read more creator stories: See how Youness School chose Teachable to train more than 2,000 engineering-prep students, and browse the full Success Stories collection.

Learn the sell-first approach: Stefan proves demand before he builds. For more on that, read how to make money selling courses right now.

Try Teachable yourself: Teachable gave Stefan one place to build, sell, and run his courses, with Teachable Payments handling tax and local methods for a global audience. Start your free Teachable trial and build the course your audience keeps asking you for.

Before Youness Es-Sebiy built Youness School into a course business that has trained more than 2,000 students, he did what most serious creators do first: he tried the other options. 

He taught on several platforms and compared what each one actually delivered for his school. 

The answer he reached was Teachable, and he is direct about the reasons.

"I have tested other platforms in the past, including Thinkific and Podia. While they are good platforms, I ultimately chose Teachable because of two factors that were very important for my business and my students … The first is security … The second is the mobile learning experience." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

That decision came from someone who knows the stakes from the inside. In Morocco, the road to a top engineering school runs through CPGE, the Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles: two intensive years after high school studying advanced math, physics, chemistry, and engineering sciences, then one national exam that decides which schools will take a student. Youness went through all of it. He reached the other side and graduated from École Hassania des Travaux Publics, one of the leading engineering schools in the country.

Then he started teaching the students coming up behind him. He launched Youness School in 2019 while he was still an engineering student himself, recording lessons for the exact exams he had just survived. By 2023 the school was his full-time work.

Today it has directly supported more than 2,000 students preparing for Morocco's national exam (the CNC) and the French Grandes Écoles exams, with more than 20,000 others reached through free lessons and his YouTube channels across Morocco, France, Tunisia, and Mauritania.

The two reasons he named for choosing Teachable, security and the mobile experience, run through every part of how that school works.

Youness's Teachable story at a glance

The turning point

Youness built Youness School around a problem he had felt directly. CPGE students carry an enormous load across many subjects, and a lot of them hit a wall in one or two of those subjects with little structured help to get past it. He wanted to give them that help in a format that fit how they actually live and study.

" I went through the same preparatory classes, and they were very difficult. My goal is to help students who are facing the same problems, to help them grow and reach the best engineering schools." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

He made one early decision that shaped everything after it. Youness School would be online only. He had looked at in-person tutoring and found it too limited for what he wanted to build.

"We chose e-learning because we find the platforms very efficient. Physical classes are limited, and for our students online learning is the best solution." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

That decision raised the stakes on the platform itself. If an entire school lives online, the platform has to protect the content, reach students on whatever device they own, and keep working when the connection drops. Those three requirements are what pointed Youness toward Teachable over the other tools he had tried.

Youness's strategies for running an online engineering-prep school

Youness runs the school with the same clarity he asks of his students. Five choices shape how Youness School finds, teaches, and keeps its students.

Strategy 1: Diagnose before you sell

Most enrollments at Youness School begin with a conversation, usually on WhatsApp, where his sales team finds out where a student is actually struggling before recommending anything.

"In the beginning, we try to understand the needs of the student. If a student has problems across many topics, we offer a bundle with the whole platform. If they only have difficulty in one subject, we give them one or two courses." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

The result is a recommendation matched to what the student actually needs. A student weak in one subject buys a single course. Someone starting the full two-year climb buys a bundle, which Teachable lets him package as one grouped program.

Take action

• Map your catalog to specific problems before you set pricing. When a buyer can see the one course that solves their exact issue, the decision gets easier for both of you.
• Use a short intake conversation or form to route students to the right product. Bundles let you group related courses into a single program for learners who need the full path.

Strategy 2: Blend recorded courses with live teaching and coaching

Youness School runs on three formats at once: recorded lessons students watch on their own time, live sessions with collaborating professors, and one-on-one coaching.

"We use both approaches. We have recorded classes on the platform with Teachable, and we have live courses with professors who teach in these preparatory classes. There is also coaching to answer questions and correct their work." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

The recorded library carries the core curriculum and reaches every enrolled student. Live sessions and coaching cover the moments where students need a person in the room with them: stuck on a problem set, preparing for a mock exam, or talking through method. Together they create the kind of student experience that keeps learners moving through the material.

Take action

• Treat recorded and live formats as partners. Recorded content delivers your teaching to every student who enrolls, and live sessions add the accountability and feedback that keep them on track.
• Decide which parts of your subject truly need real-time interaction, and reserve live time for those. Let the recorded library handle everything a student can absorb on their own.

Strategy 3: Protect the content so it stays worth paying for

For a school that sells exam-prep video, the content is the product. Youness named content protection as one of the two factors that decided his platform choice.

"As an online school, protecting our educational content is a top priority. I found Teachable's video hosting and content protection to be particularly strong, which gave me more confidence using the platform for premium courses." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

Secure video hosting keeps his lessons from leaking out, which matters when the same exam prep sells to a fresh cohort every year. Content that walks out the door loses the value he priced it on.

Take action

• If your courses are your main income, weigh content security when you choose a platform, not after you have already built on it.
• Price premium material with the assumption that it will keep selling for years. Protection is what keeps that assumption true.

Strategy 4: Make the school work on a phone, and offline

This is the choice most specific to where Youness teaches. His students are spread across Morocco and the wider Francophone world, and the connection they study on is uneven. The Teachable mobile app, and offline downloads in particular, became central to how the school reaches them.

"The mobile app lets students access their courses easily on their phones and tablets. The ability to download videos for offline viewing has been extremely valuable, especially for students who do not always have a stable internet connection." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

The context behind that quote is real. In 2025, about 36 percent of people in Africa used the internet, the lowest rate of any world region, according to the International Telecommunication Union. For a student living inside that gap, a course that only streams is a course that stalls every time the signal drops. An offline download turns a commute, a power cut, or a weak connection into study time.

Take action

• If any part of your audience studies on mobile or deals with patchy internet, test the offline experience yourself before you commit. Download a lesson, switch off your data, and watch what your student would see.
• Shoot and format your video for a phone screen. Most of these students learn on a device they hold in one hand.

Strategy 5: Keep the door open on price and access

Youness prices across a wide range, from single courses around $60 to full programs above $1,000, so a student pays only for what they need. He also gives free access to families facing financial hardship, and he has used free trial periods to let students try the school before paying.

"We give some courses for free to families facing financial difficulties. We want talented students to have access regardless of their financial situation." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

More than 5,000 students have come through Youness School's free-access and trial campaigns, which widened his reach and let prospective students experience the platform before buying. Payment access shapes the model too. In Morocco, many students and parents pay by bank or cash transfer, and a card is rarely the default, so a real conversation often comes before a sale.

Take action

• Build a price ladder. A range from one course to a full program lets students sort themselves by need and budget.
• Give people a low-cost way to try before they buy. A free lesson or trial period does the convincing a sales page cannot.

How Youness thinks about access

Youness built the school around one belief, and he states it plainly.

"We believe talented students should have access to elite-level education regardless of their city, country, or financial situation." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

That belief is why offline access matters so much to him, and why the price range stays wide. The students he most wants to reach are often the ones with the least reliable connection and the tightest budgets. Building for them first is what makes the school useful to everyone else.

What his students take away

The measure that matters to Youness is straightforward: whether his students get into the schools they are aiming for. Since 2019 he has worked directly with more than 2,000 of them, with another 20,000-plus reached through free lessons, webinars, and his YouTube channels. They sit the same national exam he once sat, and the strongest performers go on to the top engineering schools in Morocco and France.

"My advice would be to focus on the student experience and content protection. If security, accessibility, and mobile learning matter to you, I would recommend Teachable. Students can learn from any device and access content wherever they are, and that makes a real difference." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

Youness is one of a growing number of creators using Teachable to teach students far beyond their home country. Elisa Azoum grew French Mornings to more than 2,850 language students across dozens of countries on the same platform. The pattern is consistent: subject expertise, a clear program, and a platform that travels with the student.

Looking ahead

Youness has a wider plan for the school. CPGE is a small field by design, with roughly ten thousand students entering each year in Morocco. He wants to take the same model to high school students, a group he puts at around half a million in Morocco alone, and eventually to learners in other countries.

"I have a global strategy to develop Youness School and help more people. In Morocco there are about half a million high school students, and we want to give them similar platforms and solutions." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

The plan he describes brings together education, technology, and the careful use of AI, built for students who would otherwise sit outside the reach of this kind of coaching.

Youness's students pay differently than a US or European creator's audience does. Cards aren't the default in Morocco. Many families pay by bank transfer. And selling across Morocco, France, Tunisia, and Mauritania means four different markets, currencies, and different sets of tax rules.

But the best part is that, in the near future, Youness won't ave to manage payments manually.

That's exactly what Teachable Payments is built for. Local payment methods appear automatically at checkout based on where the student is. Tax is calculated, collected, and remitted across 45+ countries without the creator filing anything. Prices display in the student's local currency without manual configuration.

For a school built around the belief that talented students should have access regardless of where they live, the checkout experience should reflect that too, and now it does.

What to do next

Explore Youness School: Visit younesschool.com to see the courses and programs, and youness.online for more on Youness's work. Follow Youness Es-Sebiy on LinkedIn and YouTube, and follow the Youness School YouTube channel and company page on LinkedIn.

Try Teachable today: Youness built a school that protects its content, reaches students on any device, and keeps teaching when the internet drops. Teachable handles the video hosting, the mobile app, and the payments so creators can spend their time with students. With Teachable Payments, that now includes local payment methods for an international student base like his.

‍Start your free Teachable today.

Amie Tollefsrud calls herself a lazy person. She has generated over $11 million on Teachable saying so.

"I am a self-proclaimed, very lazy person." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Most creators treat that word as the enemy. Amie treats it as the whole strategy.

She runs an eight-figure course business from her bed or a beach club lounger, and she got there by doing less of the wrong work, not more of it. The lazy move, in her hands, keeps turning out to be the smart one.

Amie's Teachable story at a glance

The turning point: From nanny gigs to a scalable business

Before the eight figures, Amie worked a nannying job and felt certain it was not going to be her life. She trained as a nutritionist, started seeing clients one-on-one, and hit the ceiling every service provider eventually hits. 

There are only so many hours in a day, and trading them for money never scales.

So she did the lazy thing, which also happened to be the smart thing. Amie took the advice she repeated to clients over and over and built it into an online course that could reach all of them at once.

"That's when I created my first online nutrition course to try and reach and help more people all at once. A little less effort from there." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

She built that first course from a tiny hut in Maui, carrying five figures of debt and using an outdoor toilet. Amie had no business degree, no investors, and by her own account no tech skills. The slick tools creators reach for today did not exist for her, so she sold it without them. Then she ran her first launch.

"One of my first course launches ever, I think I had made like $5,000 in the span of an hour. And I just remember, like, jumping up and down. [It] was the most money I'd ever made at once in my entire life." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

The nutrition courses worked, and as they kept working, her audience started asking her about something other than nutrition.

"All anybody ever wanted to ask me was, like, how I ran [and] how I built [my] business online, because it allowed me to travel the world and really do all the things that I dreamed about growing up." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

That repeated question was its own market research. Her audience told her what they wanted before she ever built it, the exact validation signal she now teaches her students to watch for.

So she followed it. The nutritionist became the course-creation expert.

That pivot grew into Rebelle Nutrition's eight-figure education business: Online Course Academy, Passive Income Academy, and the program that ties them together, the Lazy Millionaire Method, which has helped more than 4,000 students across niches build profitable courses of their own. 

Amie has been on Teachable since close to the platform's earliest days, running the same play on repeat for the better part of a decade: take lived experience, turn it into a course, sell the shift it creates, and let it run.

The throughline from that first nutrition course to the business today comes down to a handful of principles Amie applies every single time. Here are the ones doing the heaviest lifting.

Amie's strategies for building an 8-figure course business

Strategy 1: Sell the shift your student is buying

The biggest mistake Amie sees in first-time creators is selling the wrong thing. They list their modules, their PDFs, their hours of video, then wonder why nobody buys.

"When somebody buys a course, they're not just buying the number of lessons or modules or PDFs. They're buying a shift, a shift in how they feel, how they think, what they can do, or what their life is going to look like after the course is finished." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Amie points to her own dentist as the perfect salesperson.

Curious about Invisalign, she expected a pitch about process and timeline. Instead he showed her a photo of her teeth that day, next to a mockup of her teeth a year later. He simply sold her the result she actually wanted.

"Immediately, I was like, 'Take my money. I want that.'" – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Amie has her students build what she calls a before-and-after blueprint. They write the student's exact frustration today in the student's own words, then the specific, tangible result waiting on the other side.

The result has to be concrete, never a fuzzy phrase like "feel empowered." It should be something a person could physically point to, like "I don't even need to wear foundation anymore because my skin is so clear," or "I got my 5K down by five minutes." The course becomes the bridge between those two points.

Take action

• Write the shift in one sentence: "This course takes you from ______ to ______." Say it aloud to someone outside your industry. Hesitation on their end means it needs sharpening.
• Replace every fuzzy outcome like "clarity" or "confidence" with something the buyer could point to in real life.

Strategy 2: Get specific enough to stop the scroll

Selling a shift only works when it gets specific enough that the right person cannot scroll past it.

"Vague doesn't sell. Specific sells. Specific is what makes people stop scrolling. Specific is what makes people pull out their wallets and buy." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Her litmus test sits in the gap between "Learn how to eat clean" and "A step-by-step guide to clear your hormonal acne in 30 days."

Identical expertise sits underneath both titles. The second one aims at one specific person with a real promise, and that version is the one that sells. Broad offers leave buyers quietly wondering whether the thing is really for them, and uncertainty kills the sale.

"When somebody is not sure, they do not buy. But when your offer is specific, it builds instant trust. It shows people that you know exactly what they're going through and exactly how to help them." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Amie pushes for a timeframe wherever it stays honest, such as "in 30 days" or "in 90 days," because a clear timeline makes the result feel achievable. She also insists on the buyer's actual language over insider jargon.

Take action

• Rewrite your title to name a clear outcome, and add a realistic timeframe when you can stand behind it.
• Read your title for jargon. Any word your ideal student would never say out loud in conversation has to go.

Strategy 3: Validate before you build a single lesson

Amie is blunt about why so many capable creators, even ones with big audiences, launch into silence. They guessed.

"You wouldn't want to open a French bakery without knowing if anyone in town likes croissants, right? So same thing here. Let's make sure you're baking what people are actually hungry for." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Her method skips surveys and spreadsheets.

Amie has creators hold three to five real conversations with people who feel like ideal students, through DMs, email, or a quick call. 

The questions stay simple: their biggest frustration with the topic, what they have already tried and why it fell short, and whether a step-by-step course to the result would actually help. Then she listens for the line between polite interest and real urgency.

"We're not looking for perfection, we're just looking for proof. Proof that your idea has legs, and proof that people are already searching for this solution." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

She also reframes the whole exercise so it never feels like begging for approval.

"Validation is not about asking for permission. You are the expert. You have the vision. This is just about making sure that your offer meets people where they are before you invest the time turning it into something amazing." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Take action

• Before building anything, run three to five conversations with ideal students and capture their exact words. Those words become your sales page copy.
• Track urgency over politeness. "That sounds interesting" carries far less signal than "when can I buy this."

Strategy 4: Launch imperfect, then get 1% better forever

For all the strategy, Amie credits one unglamorous habit above the rest. She ships before it is ready.

"That's also, I think, exactly why I have been successful, because I take action and I launch things actually before they're perfect." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Her first launch, by her own description, was scrappy and far from what she wanted. It still made $5,000 in an hour.

The creators who never break through are usually the ones tweaking and refining until the moment to launch quietly slips past.

"Launch quickly and fast and let it be imperfect. And also just always go back and iterate, like, there's always something you can make better, and then you can get, like, 1% better every time. And it really, over time, does make a difference." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

That iteration habit also keeps students coming back. Asked what most reliably turns a one-time buyer into a repeat customer, Amie answered without hesitating.

"The results that they get the first time around. So if they feel like you went above and beyond the thing that they thought they were going to get, they're definitely going to come back in for a second time." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Take action

• Set a launch date before the course feels finished, and treat version one as a starting point instead of a final product.
• Build your first module to deliver a real, fast win. Early results earn you the student's next purchase.

Strategy 5: Build a passive funnel, then get more from every buyer

Amie's revenue does not come from chasing new customers all day. It runs on a system that works without her and pulls more value from every person who already decided to buy.

The top of her funnel is her audience on Instagram, TikTok, and now Substack. From there she offers something free and valuable, a fully automated hour-long masterclass, and sells her program at the end of that training.

Automated email sequences of five to seven messages follow up over the next week with anyone who did not buy right away, paired with a real reason to act now.

The lazy genius shows up in what she layers on top: order bumps and post-purchase upsells.

"Think about, like, when you're at the grocery store and there's all the candy right before you checkout, the people are buying things anyway. So at the last minute, it's a really good time to upsell them on similar items that they might also want." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Someone who just decided to spend money will spend a little more, so one buyer becomes worth far more without any extra traffic.

"It's just a really easy and lazy way, honestly, to generate more revenue with the same amount of effort. You [don't] have to be continuously, like, chasing down [a new] client. You can just make more off of the one-time purchase." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Take action

• Replace one-off launches with an evergreen funnel: free value such as a masterclass leading to your paid offer, backed by an automated email sequence.
• Add an order bump or post-purchase upsell at checkout. The buyer already said yes, which makes it the easiest revenue you will add all year.

Why Amie bets on being human in the age of AI

The obvious objection to any course in 2026 sounds simple. Plenty of people ask why they would pay for a course when AI hands over information free.

Amie does not dodge that objection. She agrees that good free information exists everywhere, then explains why it falls short of the real thing.

"[AI] can give you a lot of valuable information, but [it hasn't] actually done the thing in real life and achieved the results that you're looking for. Like a human can." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Her edge comes from having lived the outcome she teaches, start to finish.

"I actually have achieved the results that I'm teaching in real life. I'm somebody who literally started from zero. I didn't have any money to invest. I didn't even have tech skills... I went through years of, like, struggle and figuring it out and trying things that didn't work and failing. And that was years of experience in real life." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

She sees the same change defining the whole industry. The creators who win next will skip the losing game of competing with a chatbot on facts.

"The next wave of successful course creators will be the ones who are thinking really innovatively about what they can offer and sell that is... offering people more than what they can just go to [AI] and find an answer to." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

In practice, that means pairing the digital course with something only a person can give: community, group support, an occasional live touchpoint, whatever fits the creator's energy and style.

This reframe helps any creator worried that AI made their knowledge worthless. Amie's bet runs the other direction. The more information becomes free and instant, the more valuable a real guide who has walked the path becomes.

"People don't want a robot or a guru or a PhD professor. They want a real person who's relatable and a few steps ahead of them." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

Looking ahead

These days, Amie is most excited about Substack, which she started in the past year.

It has become both a fresh revenue stream and a surprisingly strong top of funnel. Readers who find her there often go on to buy her courses, sometimes converting better than social media. Her approach to it stays pure Amie: every post gets treated like a tiny product.

"I look at every article I write almost like a 12-minute course." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

For someone who has done eight figures, she stays remarkably clear that the path was never about being special.

"To be honest, I always imagined that this would be my life... I just had no clue, like, how [I was] actually going to do that." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

The advice she would give the version of herself still working that nannying job is the same advice underneath everything she teaches today.

"Keep going. Let the things that you are excited about drive you. If you feel this excited about something, you're probably onto something. Keep going. Keep doing it, because it's just going to lead you to [the life] that you've always dreamed of." – Amie Tollefsrud, Founder of Rebelle Nutrition and Lazy Millionaire

What to do next

Get Amie's free playbook: Grab The Profitable Course Playbook on Teachable, where Amie walks through how to find the right course idea, validate it, and build something people actually pay for.

Watch the full interview: See Amie tell her complete story on YouTube.

Explore more from Amie: YouTube | Instagram | Teachable School | Website 

Explore more creator stories: Read how other educators are winning on Teachable in our Success Stories collection.

Try Teachable yourself: Amie turned a scrappy first launch into an eight-figure business by selling the shift her students want, validating before building, and refusing to wait for perfect. Start your free Teachable trial and build the course your audience already keeps asking you for.

TL;DR: There are 7 commonly cited types of learners: visual, auditory, reading and writing, kinesthetic, verbal, social and solitary. The first four make up Neil Fleming's VARK model, the most widely used framework, which treats them as preferences rather than fixed labels. Research has not found that matching lessons to one preferred style improves learning, so treat these categories as a checklist for variety, not for sorting students. The practical takeaway for course creators: build each lesson in more than one format, such as video, a written summary and a hands-on task, and ask students how they like to learn.

We all absorb and retain information in different ways. Some people learn faster and more efficiently when content includes visuals like charts, photos, or videos. Others prefer to read and write to retain information. Course creators that know the different types of learning styles can use them to improve student experiences and outcomes. If you know your students and the ways they learn, you can adapt your teaching styles to suit them better.

Creating courses with learning and teaching styles in mind will set you and your students up for success. We’ll go over each learning method and how to identify them. Plus, we’ll provide examples and tips on how to create courses, coaching, and other educational products for each learning style.

What are learning styles?

Learning styles are the preferred methods that people use to understand and remember information. By identifying your students’ learning styles, you can create course materials that suit their preferences.

There is some debate over how many types of learning exist. Common models list between four and eight learning styles. We’ll go over each in detail below.

One person can have multiple styles. These are known as multimodal learners. They retain information and may thrive using more than one learning style.

What the research says about learning styles

Most people do have preferences for how they take in information. But a 2017 review in Frontiers in Psychology found that the idea that teaching to a student's preferred style improves learning "has been repeatedly tested and there is currently no evidence to support it" (Newton and Miah, 2017).

That doesn't make learning styles useless for course creators. Treat them as a checklist for variety, not a rule for sorting students. A lesson that combines a short video, a written summary and a hands-on task works for more people than a lesson built for one style.

The 7 types of learning styles

New Zealand educator Neil Fleming developed the VARK model in 1987. It’s one of the most common methods to identify learning styles. Fleming proposed four primary learning preferences: visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic. The first letter of each spells out the acronym (VARK).

We’ll go over the VARK learning styles and three others that researchers and educators have identified below.

1. Visual learning

When you create a course curriculum, consider how many and what type of visuals to include. Visual learners prefer to see information laid out, so diagrams and video often do more for them than long blocks of text.

To learn best, visual learners need graphs, illustrations, diagrams, videos, and other visuals. You can also teach visual learners better by incorporating these into your lessons.

• Images
• Charts
• Maps
• Infographics
• Illustrations
• Photographs
• Flashcards with images
• Animations
• Virtual whiteboards

Using all of these visuals at once will overwhelm your students. Instead, identify opportunities to display information as a visual and choose the best method for it.

Video courses are a natural way to help visual learners. If you’re new to recording videos, you can take a course or watch a tutorial on making high-quality videos for your courses. You can also design and voiceover slideshows.

Visual learners also read and write like other students but may add images to notes, highlight sentences, or draw graphs. It can be helpful to provide them with downloadable versions of course materials so that they can take notes. On our platform, you can add digital downloads to your website and courses.

One of our creators, Lauren Hom, combines visual and other types of learning styles in her lettering course. Course lessons include videos, live drawing practice, and printable workbooks.

2. Auditory learning

Auditory learners like to listen to absorb information. Auditory learners may listen to lectures, podcasts, music, and videos.

They also tend to read their notes aloud to help them understand and retain information or listen to music to study.

You can cater to auditory learners by:

• Using music and songs to remember information
• Providing audio versions of notes
• Encouraging discussions of learning materials

In addition to adjusting your teaching methods to different types of learners, you should also consider the subject.

For example, if you teach guitar online, it will naturally have an audio element. However, you may combine the sounds of different guitar strings with images and videos of them. When you combine different teaching methods, you can cater to multiple learning styles.

3. Reading and writing

Learners who prefer reading and writing thrive with traditional textbooks, handouts, and written assignments. Reading and writing learners are similar to visual learners because they like to see the information on a page.

To teach reading and writing learners, try to present information in one of these forms:

• Books
• Articles
• Blogs
• Essays
• Written instructions
• Workbooks
• Quizzes
• Written assignments

You could also consider creating an ebook to supplement your course material. So if you have a video course, add transcripts to your lessons so students can read along and take notes.

4. Kinesthetic

The kinesthetic learning style is learning by doing. And people who are kinesthetic learners learn better when they’re physically moving and getting hands-on experience.

Kinesthetic learners prefer playing games or doing puzzles as part of the learning process. They tend to enjoy problem-solving and trying new activities to build skills.

Many people associate kinesthetic learning with physical activities and in-person learning environments. However, you can still cater to kinesthetic learners when you create an online course.

For example, many developer courses include coding challenges, hackathons, and other activities where students learn by doing.

Here are some ideas to help you teach kinesthetic learners:

• Schedule short breaks for live courses longer than 30 minutes.
• Add real-life assignments. For example, a course about plants may add a practical element where students transplant and care for a houseplant.
• Create project briefs based on real-life scenarios, so students can practice.
• Add physical activity. Some online courses, such as meditation, yoga, and fitness, will naturally be more interactive.

If you want to add a more physical element, you can also include printables and supplies. Another option is to send materials to students in the mail.

There are many ways to teach kinesthetic learners. One example is the Hands-on Kids Activities Club (HOKA), a membership club for teachers. Every month, teachers get downloadable printables and other resources to create hands-on learning experiences. In one bundle, students learn about an artist and do an art project in that artist’s style.

5. Verbal or linguistic learning

Verbal learners or linguistic learners retain information best by hearing and envisioning words. You may also hear this called verbal-linguistic learning. Similar to an auditory learner, a verbal learner speaks aloud to memorize information better. They tend to be avid readers and may be talented storytellers or poets.

Any of these can help a verbal learner:

• Lectures
• Podcasts
• Presentations
• Flashcards with words
• Word games and puzzles

This type of learning is also common in language courses. If you teach students how to speak Spanish, English, French, or another language, verbal learning will come in handy. They’ll want to hear how you pronounce words and practice speaking them on their own.

6. Social or interpersonal learning

Some students learn better alone and others learn better while in groups. Social, also called interpersonal, learners thrive in group discussions and group coaching.

They enjoy speaking in front of groups and asking questions. A social learner will like to give and receive feedback from other students and bounce ideas off others.

Interpersonal learners prefer these types of activities:

• Group discussions and activities
• Public speaking: presenting their work
• Working with a partner
• Studying flashcards with a partner
• Team-building exercises

For online courses, live cohort sessions and group coaching calls give social learners the interaction they look for. See our guide to cohort-based learning.

7. Solitary or intrapersonal learning

Solitary learners prefer to learn on their own rather than with groups of peers. The word intrapersonal is similar to introvert. Solitary learners can feel drained from social activities.

These students don’t enjoy group work and would rather get a list of items to study and work independently. Instead of getting ideas and feedback from other students, solitary learners are more introspective. They can get lost in their work and are more hesitant to ask for feedback or ideas from others.

Here are some ideas to help teach solitary learners:

• Ask questions to build trust and learn more about them.
• Give them space to work independently.
• Explain the why behind projects. Solitary learners focus on the future and outcomes, so they like to know the importance of learning different concepts.

Solitary learners are self-starters, so they usually have the determination to complete a course. Even though they prefer learning independently, learning from others has many benefits too.

Sometimes getting a solitary learner to open up more, ask for feedback, and challenge themselves can improve their learning. You could also offer solitary learners coaching or feedback sessions with you to help them develop their learning in a one-on-one environment.

How to identify student learning styles

Most adults have a sense of their preferred learning style. You can ask students or coaching clients which methods they prefer via an intake form when they sign up for your courses or coaching.

To identify learning styles, you can:

• Include an intake form on your sign-up pages
• Ask new students about their preferred learning styles directly
• Observe your students throughout the course
• Use assessments to help students figure out the learning style they like best

You can also use an online quiz like the VARK questionnaire to understand new students better. VARK describes its results as a pattern of preferences rather than a fixed label, so use them as a guide, not a box to put students in. Another option is to create your own assessment and tailor it to your teaching style and course topic. Some sample questions you can use to create a quiz or questionnaire to identify learning styles are:

• Do you prefer to work alone or in groups?
• Would diagrams and illustrations make it easier to understand a concept?
• Is it easier to remember something in words or images?
• To understand how a machine works, would you take the machine apart yourself?
• Do you remember facts and figures more by hearing them spoken or reading them?

Let students know this is the kind of quiz with no wrong answer. You’ll use the answers to understand what type of learning style they prefer and tailor your teaching to better suit them.

Note that this type of questionnaire works best with coaching or online courses that use cohorts with specific start dates. You can use it to fine-tune your course curriculum for each cohort or personalize coaching sessions.

How to teach different types of learning styles in an online course

As you plan your course, think about how you can accommodate each learning style. For example, auditory learners usually thrive on discussion. On the other hand, learners who prefer to read and write might struggle with group discussions or debates. Discussions can be harder for them because they like to write their thoughts down first before speaking.

To accommodate different types of learning styles, provide several options. In the example above, you could give your students a discussion prompt ahead of time. Reading and writing learners can write talking points down before and auditory learners get the benefits of learning through discussion.

A simple way to build this into every lesson:

1. Record the core lesson as a short video with on-screen visuals.
2. Add a transcript or written summary below the video.
3. Finish with a task students do themselves, such as a worksheet, quiz or small project.
4. For cohorts or coaching, add a live session for discussion. For more ideas, see our student engagement strategies.

The ui.dev online courses are perfect examples of how to consider different types of learning. Looking at their React coding course, you can see that they provide lessons in two forms: video and text. This way visual, auditory, and reading and writing learners can refer to the materials that they understand best. It also includes kinesthetic learning with practice coding activities and projects where students build real-world applications.

Share your knowledge online

No two students are exactly alike. A learning style that works for some students might not work for others. You can still offer your students or clients a meaningful learning experience.

Identifying how your students learn best helps you teach them in ways that will be the most successful. It also shows them that you care about their learning experience and outcomes. So by considering all the different learning styles, you’ll create an online course that appeals to a larger pool of people.

How students prefer to learn is one half of the picture. The other half is how you teach, which our guide to teaching stylescovers. If your students are adults, our explainer on adult learning theory is a useful next read.

Once you've planned how to support each learning style, you can create a course with us. From there, you can build online courses, coaching services, and even digital downloads. To get started, try our online course platform free for 7 days.

Frequently asked questions

What are the 4 types of learning styles?

The 4 types of learning styles in the VARK model are visual, auditory, reading and writing, and kinesthetic. Many guides add verbal, social and solitary learning to reach 7.

Does teaching to learning styles improve results?

Research has not found that it does. Studies of the matching idea, where each student gets lessons in their preferred style, have not shown better learning. Offering the same lesson in several formats is the more practical approach for online courses.

Can you have more than one learning style?

Yes. People who use more than one learning style are called multimodal learners. Most people have a dominant preference but also pick up information through other styles, so building lessons in multiple formats works for most students, not just the ones who match a single, pure type.

How do I find out my learning style?

Take an assessment like the VARK questionnaire, or ask directly through an intake form when students sign up for a course. Observing how students engage with different materials over time is also a reliable way to figure out what works best for them.

Key terms

Learning style: a person's preferred way of taking in and processing information.

VARK model: Neil Fleming's framework for visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinesthetic learners, treated as preferences rather than fixed labels.

Multimodal learner: someone who learns effectively through more than one learning style rather than relying on a single preference.

Interpersonal learning: the formal term for social learning, where a person learns best through group discussion and collaboration.

Intrapersonal learning: the formal term for solitary learning, where a person learns best working independently.

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TL;DR: Most platform comparisons focus on discussion features. The real differentiators are fee stacks, tax compliance, and course delivery depth. Skool offers strong gamification and Circle has polished discussion layouts, but both leave international tax filing to the creator across most markets. Our Teachable Payments handles automated tax remittance across 45+ countries, and our Builder plan ($69/month on annual billing) bundles course delivery tools and 0% platform fees in a single subscription. If you sell structured courses to an international audience, the fee math and tax exposure matter more than leaderboard badges.

A thriving discussion board is only as valuable as the business infrastructure sitting underneath it. Creators who pick a community platform based on engagement features alone often discover, after their first international sale, that they owe VAT or sales tax to authorities in various countries, and their platform left that entirely to them. This guide compares the top online community platforms on the metrics that actually determine take-home pay and operational risk: fee stacks, tax compliance, course delivery depth, and mobile delivery.

Must-have tools for building a paid community

Running a paid community is running a business. Before evaluating discussion layouts and gamification, confirm a platform covers three operational requirements:

1. Built-in checkout that handles recurring and one-time payments without a third-party gateway
2. Structured content delivery that keeps members progressing through your material
3. Moderation tools that let you manage student access without writing code

Creators who skip this audit typically discover the gaps during a live launch, when a broken checkout or missing payment tool costs them revenue that cannot be recovered. The launch strategy resources on our blog cover how to pressure-test your full workflow before a live window opens.

How to boost active community participation

Engagement inside a paid community does not happen by itself. The platforms that drive the highest daily active participation combine three mechanics: structured prompts that give members a reason to post, member directories so participants can find peers with shared goals, and gamification layers such as points, leaderboards, and badges that reward consistent contribution.

The trade-off is that gamification without structured content creates engagement that peaks and then plateaus. For creators building course-based student engagement, the combination of discussion spaces and drip-released lesson content produces more sustained retention than either tool alone.

How to collect payments from students

You need built-in checkout support for one-time purchases and recurring memberships, multi-currency acceptance, and subscription management tools that allow students to pause or cancel without manual intervention on your end.

A short enrollment window to a warm email list is a high-stakes event, and downtime or a broken upsell during that window is not recoverable. Reviewing a platform's incident history and uptime documentation before committing is a useful due diligence step.

Managing your course content delivery

A community without a learning path is a chat room. Creators who combine structured courses with discussion spaces see meaningfully higher completion rates because students have clear milestones to work toward and a community to discuss them in. The features that separate deep course delivery from basic video hosting include drip content scheduling, progress tracking at the individual student level, compliance settings like minimum watch-time enforcement, and quizzes with graded assessments.

These features also affect how students perceive the value of what they bought. For creators building toward credentialed programs, delivery depth matters as much as the content itself.

Platform pricing and net margin impact

Headline subscription prices are the sticker price. The receipt has more lines. Every platform stacks a subscription fee, a platform transaction fee on every sale, and a payment processing fee charged by the underlying card processor. International transactions can add a currency conversion fee on top.

Think of the platform transaction fee like rent versus buying: percentage-based fees on lower-tier plans compound as revenue grows. The revenue and pricing strategy resources on our site cover how to model this across different product structures.

Best community software for paid creator growth

The six platforms below represent the realistic shortlist for creators building monetized communities in 2026. Each has a distinct strength, and each has structural limitations that matter at different revenue levels.

Evaluating Skool for paid communities

Skool positions itself around community-first design: the member feed is the product, and gamification, including points, leaderboards, and level-ups for participation, drives daily logins. Skool's Pro plan runs $99/month on monthly billing ($82/month effective on annual billing) and charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction up to $900, rising to 3.9% + $0.30 above that.

On tax compliance, Skool collects and remits VAT for EU buyers as a qualifying marketplace under VAT regulations. That coverage does not extend to the 45+ countries that Teachable Payments covers, so creators with students in Australia, Canada, India, or across the US may remain personally responsible for those tax obligations.

On course delivery, Skool reportedly lacks quizzes and completion certificates. Skool reportedly includes a drip feature that unlocks content after a set number of days from when a member joins. If your paid community sells certification-based programs or needs graded assessments, Skool may require a separate platform to handle that delivery, which adds cost and integration fragility.

Circle platform pricing and fees

Circle offers polished discussion spaces with custom branding, organized spaces, and solid moderation tools. Circle's Professional plan runs $89/month on annual billing with a 2% transaction fee, and Business runs $199/month annual with a 1% fee, both stacking on top of standard Stripe and PayPal processing fees.

Circle's course builder reportedly includes basic quiz functionality with minimum passing grades and drip content scheduling across structured and time-based release options. It also reportedly supports basic lesson-order enforcement. What Circle reportedly lacks are graded open-ended assessments, rubric-based scoring, and completion certificates at the level we provide. Circle does not automate international tax remittance, so creators handling international sales are personally responsible for calculating and remitting VAT, GST, and applicable sales taxes. Our Teachable Payments automates that across 45+ countries, and our Builder plan includes the certificate issuance and compliance settings that Circle reportedly cannot match at its mid-tier pricing.

Fully branded iOS and Android mobile apps on Circle require Circle Plus, which carries custom pricing. We include native apps on all plans.

Mighty Networks for paid communities

Mighty Networks combines community, courses, and live events under one roof. According to third-party sources, its plan structure reportedly includes Launch ($79/month), Scale ($179/month), and Mighty Pro (custom pricing) tiers. Platform transaction fees reportedly run 2% on Launch, 1% on Scale, and 0.5% on Mighty Pro.

Mighty Networks supports drip content scheduling and course modules, but does not issue native completion certificates, requiring a third-party tool connected via Zapier to generate them. Like Circle, Mighty Networks reportedly does not automate international tax remittance, leaving VAT and GST obligations as a manual responsibility that Teachable Payments removes. Custom-branded iOS and Android apps require Mighty Pro, putting them out of range for most independent creators, while we include native apps on all plans without an enterprise subscription.

Why Discord and Slack fail for paid communities

Discord costs nothing to start, which makes it an attractive early option. The operational reality for paid communities is less convenient. Discord offers native Server Subscriptions where members pay a monthly fee directly for exclusive channels and perks, with Discord taking a 10% cut of subscription revenue. What Discord reportedly cannot do is gate content by lesson completion, track learner progress, deliver drip-scheduled course content, or automate international tax remittance. Paywalled course delivery still requires third-party tools, and each additional integration is a failure point during a live launch.

Slack's free plan limits message history to 90 days of searchable content, which becomes a real problem for a paid community designed as a searchable knowledge base. Paid Slack plans run $7.25 to $15 per user per month on annual billing, and those per-seat costs scale against you as your community grows. Neither Discord nor Slack reportedly includes built-in course delivery, checkout capability, or automated tax compliance. Both require external subscription management software and leave you personally responsible for international VAT and GST remittance that Teachable Payments automates across 45+ countries.

Teachable for course-heavy creators

Our course delivery infrastructure covers graded assessments, native completion certificates, drip content scheduling, and watch-time enforcement. No other platform in this comparison provides all four natively. Teachable Payments automatically calculates and remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries, removing the creator from the tax filing loop entirely, at a geographic breadth no other platform here matches. The Builder plan ($69/month on annual billing) carries a 0% platform transaction fee, native iOS and Android apps, affiliate tools, and email integrations. BackOffice, an optional add-on carrying its own 2% to 2.8% fee, automates affiliate payouts and tax forms so you don't have to handle disbursement manually.

"Easy to create courses and sell. The platform is so good, and mainly, the designs of the landing page are stunning... I also loved the community they built." - Raghu V. on G2

Direct platform comparison for paid communities

The table below covers the full cost stack across each platform for a creator on an entry-level paid plan, including subscription, platform transaction fees, and payment processing ranges.

Teachable processing: 2.9% + $0.30 for US cards, 3.9% + $0.30 for international cards. Non-USD transactions incur an additional 0.95% Stripe currency conversion fee where currency conversion is required.

Real take-home pay after all fees

The Starter plan's 7.5% platform transaction fee costs more than upgrading to Builder once monthly revenue passes $533 on annual billing, or approximately $667 on monthly billing. Creators should model their expected monthly revenue against both plan options to determine which tier offers better economics at their revenue level.

At higher revenue levels, the math becomes more stark. Percentage-based platform fees on lower-tier plans can compound significantly, while plans with zero platform fees eliminate that variable cost entirely. Non-USD creators should also model currency conversion fees against expected international transaction volume before comparing net take-home across platforms. For a deeper breakdown of how these fees interact with different product structures, the revenue and pricing section of our blog covers the modeling frameworks.

Key platform differences for creators

The three structural differences that determine long-term operational risk are:

1. Tax compliance: Our Teachable Payments covers 45+ countries for automated VAT and GST remittance. Skool reportedly remits EU VAT as a qualifying marketplace but does not cover the broader country set. Circle and Mighty Networks reportedly leave tax remittance to the creator entirely.
2. Native mobile apps: We include iOS and Android apps on all plans at no additional cost. Circle's branded apps reportedly require Circle Plus at custom pricing. Mighty Networks' custom apps reportedly require Mighty Pro at custom pricing. Skool reportedly includes mobile apps on its plans.
3. Student data export: We let creators export student data and purchase history, which matters when a platform restructures its pricing.

How platforms handle course delivery

The table shows that drip content scheduling is available across most platforms, but the features that separate us are quizzes with graded assessments, native completion certificates, and watch-time enforcement. For creators building certification-based programs, these features are not optional additions. They are the product.

Choosing a dedicated community tool for your members

Your primary interaction mode determines which platform makes the most sense operationally. If your members primarily engage through live events and real-time video sessions, dedicated event integration is a gap on Teachable, but creators who choose a community-only platform for that feature remain personally responsible for VAT and GST filing across the EU, UK, Australia, and Canada, where none of those platforms automate remittance.

If your members primarily work through asynchronous video content and self-paced lessons, our course delivery infrastructure gives you deeper student management, graded assessments, native certificates, and Teachable Payments handling tax remittance automatically across 45+ countries. If long-form threaded discussion is the main mode, community-only platforms offer more layout customization for that format, though adding structured courses or certificates later means either working around a platform that lacks them natively or migrating your community to one that does, which is disruptive to members and administratively expensive.

Building on a platform that handles structured course delivery from day one reduces migration risk, provided community discussion depth is not the primary product you are selling.

Best platforms for discussion groups

Community-only platforms offer threaded, channel-based discussions with search and moderation tools, along with more layout customization or event integration than a course-first platform typically provides.

These platforms require creators to manage international tax compliance manually, which becomes a material risk as international sales grow. Our Teachable Payments removes that administrative burden across 45+ countries, and creators whose members expect a community-first experience should weigh that tax and course-delivery advantage directly against the discussion depth and layout customization that Circle and Mighty Networks offer.

Discussion-first creators who choose Circle or Mighty Networks also inherit the course-delivery gap: no native completion certificates, no graded assessments, and no compliance settings, which becomes a structural problem the moment a student asks for a credential or a program needs watch-time enforcement.

Running profitable low-ticket memberships

Low-ticket memberships at $10 to $20/month are highly sensitive to transaction fees. Processing fees and platform transaction fees can represent a significant percentage of revenue per member. When a platform adds a percentage-based transaction fee on top of processing, those margin losses compound fast. Our Builder plan eliminates the platform transaction fee entirely at $69/month annual, so the only per-sale cost is payment processing.

Boost launch revenue with community

A free or low-ticket community tier works as a lead magnet for higher-ticket structured courses. Creators who offer free community access to warm their audience before a course launch consistently see higher conversion rates from engaged community members than from cold email lists. Our audience-building resources detail how to structure this funnel across different audience sizes.

When your membership needs full course delivery

Three clear triggers indicate that a community-only platform is no longer the right fit:

1. International tax exposure: You have students in the EU, UK, Australia, or Canada and your platform does not remit VAT or GST automatically
2. Certificate demand: Students are asking for credentials your platform cannot issue natively
3. Tool fragmentation: Students access courses on one platform and community on another, and you're managing two support queues

Sending a paying community member to a separate URL to access the course they paid for is friction. Friction reduces completion rates and drives refund requests. Our case studies show how creators structure combined product tiers without splitting the student experience across tools.

Managing community and course access

When course content and community discussions live on separate platforms, students deal with two login systems, two notification streams, and two places to look for help. Each additional tool is a potential failure point, and the creator absorbs the support load when they break. Disconnected tools also make it impossible to tie community access to course completion milestones, which is one of the most effective retention mechanics available to course creators.

Tools for scheduled cohort learning

Our drip content lets you release lessons on a schedule that syncs with community discussion topics. For example, a creator running a six-week cohort can unlock lesson three on Monday and progress students to lesson four the following week, all without manual intervention. For cohort-based teaching design, this sync between content release and discussion timing is the structural mechanic that drives higher completion rates.

Scaling revenue via product tiers

The most durable revenue architecture for creators combines three tiers: a free or low-ticket community entry point, a structured paid course as the core product, and a high-ticket coaching or mastermind tier for students who want direct access. We support all three through free enrollments, paid course checkouts, and native coaching features. Each tier feeds the next, and Builder's 0% platform fees protect margins across all three revenue streams.

If you're modeling platform costs before committing to a plan, run the full fee stack, subscription, transaction fee, and processing, against your expected monthly revenue. Compare plans and fees on our pricing page, or start a 7-day free trial and build your first course before paying anything.

FAQs

What should you look for when evaluating platforms for paid groups?

Prioritize payment processing, tax compliance, and course delivery depth before evaluating discussion features. We automate VAT and GST remittance across 45+ countries and include quizzes, certificates, and compliance settings, while Circle and Mighty Networks reportedly leave international tax filing to the creator and lack native completion certificates.

Does managing courses and community in one hub improve student outcomes?

Yes, students who access courses and discussions through a single login complete more lessons and submit fewer support tickets than students navigating between disconnected tools. Single-hub management also allows milestone-based community unlocks, where completing a course module automatically opens a new discussion channel.

How do you calculate your true platform take-home on each plan?

Start with your monthly revenue, subtract the platform transaction fee (percentage varies by plan and platform), then subtract payment processing fees (typically 2.9-3.9% + $0.30 depending on card origin, plus potentially a 0.95% Stripe currency conversion fee for non-USD transactions), and finally subtract the monthly subscription. The economics shift depending on your revenue level and the specific fee structures of each plan tier.

How quickly can you go from signup to first sale on Teachable?

KYC verification is required before payouts are enabled, and processing time varies, so connecting your payout account early in your setup is worth doing before your launch window opens. Most creators build their first course in the no-code editor within a few sessions. The 7-day free trial gives you enough time to build a full course, connect your payout account, and test checkout before committing to a paid plan.

Does Skool handle VAT and sales tax?

Skool remits VAT for EU buyers, acting as a qualifying marketplace under EU VAT regulations, per Skool's own VAT documentation. Skool does not automate tax remittance across the broader set of countries covered by Teachable Payments, so creators with significant sales outside the EU remain personally responsible for calculating and filing those tax obligations.

What is the transaction fee on Teachable's Builder plan?

Our Builder plan charges a 0% platform transaction fee. Standard credit card processing fees apply to US and international card transactions, with a separate Stripe currency conversion fee on non-USD transactions where currency conversion is required.

Key terms glossary

Teachable Payments: The native payment gateway that automatically calculates, collects, and remits sales tax, VAT, and GST across 45+ countries, removing the creator from the tax filing loop entirely.

Platform fee: The percentage-based transaction fee charged by a platform on each sale, sitting on top of standard credit card processing fees and separate from the monthly subscription cost.

Merchant of Record: A legal entity authorized to process payments and assume liability for financial transactions, including tax compliance and remittance to the relevant tax authority on behalf of the seller.

Drip content: A content delivery method where course lessons unlock on a schedule or after specific conditions are met, rather than all at once on enrollment.

Break-even point: The monthly revenue level at which the transaction fees on a lower-cost plan equal the subscription cost difference of the next plan up, making the upgrade economically rational.

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TL;DR: You don't legally need a life coach certification: life coaching is unregulated, so it's optional, not required. Certification can add credibility with corporate or higher-paying clients, plus structured training and a professional network, and accredited programs (look for ICF or NBHWC) range from about $1,400 to $20,000, with some unaccredited courses under $500. Real-world experience, starting with a few clients, and referrals are legitimate alternatives if you'd rather skip a program. Whichever path you choose, you can build and sell your own coaching program on Teachable.

If you've thought about becoming a life coach, you may have also thought about whether you need a life coach certification. The short answer is no, you don't need one. There's no official life coaching certification process. However, the long answer is it depends on your coaching services, clients, and goals.

Life coaching is a fast-growing industry, with the US market estimated at $2.6 billion in 2025 (IBISWorld). Globally, the coaching industry generated $5.34 billion in revenue over the past year, according to the ICF's 2025 Global Coaching Study. It could be a profitable business for you, but what do you need to get started?

There are hundreds of life coaching programs to choose from, which can also make it hard to decide. In this article, we'll dive into life coach certification programs and alternatives to help you make a decision.

What qualifications do you need to be a life coach?

To be a life coach, you only need knowledge and experience in your coaching niche. An accredited life coaching certification can distinguish you from other providers. For example, let's say you work with a large company and offer your coaching services to their employees. The company may ask for a certification as an extra layer of credibility.

Life coaching isn't a regulated profession. It doesn't have a universal standard or certification process. It's up to each coach to decide whether to pursue formal life coaching certification.

However, you can use the qualifications below to help you land more (and higher-paying) coaching clients.

• A relevant degree
• Certification
• Real-world work experience

Most life coaches hold a degree, according to ICF's 2023 Global Coaching Study: 30% have a Bachelor's degree and 65% hold a more advanced degree. They don't usually go to college specifically to pursue life coaching. Rather, backgrounds like psychology and business can naturally transition to a life coaching career.

Certification may provide resources, training programs, and networking opportunities. You can supplement certifications with real-world experience, too. For instance, a former personal trainer or professional athlete would have the right experience to become a fitness coach.

Ultimately, life coaches should be ethical, honest, and knowledgeable of the subject they're coaching. Whether you gain those qualities through a life coach certification program or somewhere else, isn't as important.

Is life coaching certification worth it?

Becoming a certified life coach won't hurt, but is it worth it? The answer depends on your background, needs, and goals.

For some, life coaching certification is a valuable way to gain the tools and knowledge for a professional coaching career. It can also help you connect with potential clients, demonstrate your expertise and credibility, and expand your network.

On the other hand, you can be a successful life coach without it. Ultimately, you must decide what's best for you. Consider the potential benefits and other factors to determine whether life coaching certification is worth it for you.

Opting out of life coaching certification today doesn't mean you can't do it later on after you have your first coaching clients. You can jump into your coaching career and revisit it in a year or two. There's no right or wrong way to start down the path of coaching.

Types of life coach certification

If you pursue certification, look for programs that are accredited. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching (NBHWC) accredit coaching programs. ICF focuses on life coaching more broadly, while NBHWC accredits health and wellness coaching programs.

ICF offers three coaching credentials (ACC, PCC, MCC), each requiring an exam, specific education hours, and logged coaching experience. Here's the breakdown for each level:

• Associate Certified Coach (ACC): Over 60 education hours and 100 hours of coaching experience. You'll also need to do ten hours of mentor coaching.
• Professional Certified Coach (PCC): Over 125 hours of education and 500 hours of experience.
• Master Certified Coach (MCC): Over 200 hours of education and 2,500 hours of experience.

Many legitimate coaching programs use the ICF credentialing structure for their certificate programs. However, they may call their levels different names from those above. Carefully review the details of a program to verify it's worth your time and money.

Five life coaching certification programs

Your coaching niche will also influence the certification you choose. For instance, if you specialize in nutrition, business, or executive coaching, you might look for a certification for that area versus a broader life coaching program.

When you're ready to choose a life coaching program, you may find the number of available courses overwhelming. First, it's helpful to narrow down your niche. Here are different types of life coaches:

• Nutrition coach
• Executive coach
• Life coach
• Fitness coach
• Career coach
• Relationship coach
• Family coach
• Finance coach
• Spiritual coach
• Mental health coach
• Leadership coach

Once you have a niche, you can research programs that suit your goals, skillset, and budget.

1. Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching

If you want a thorough life coaching program and don't mind a higher price point, the Institute for Professional Excellence (iPEC) is a good choice. This program focuses on developing leadership qualities and core competencies, including:

• Communication
• Problem-solving
• Creative thinking
• Active listening
• Decision-making

The program also includes training on how to create coaching business plans and develop successful teams. The cost includes ongoing support, membership in an online community of other coaches, and monthly seminars from experts.

The base program includes two life coaching certifications, with a third available as a paid add-on. As a result, the iPEC program is one of the most comprehensive, and also more expensive, options on the market. Therefore, it's ideal for full-time, experienced coaches.

If you've been coaching for a few years and want to boost your credibility for higher-paying clients, it could be worth the investment.

• Cost: $9,995 for the Coach Training Program (CPC and ELI-MP), plus $1,995 for the COR.E Dynamics specialty
• Duration: 320 training hours, 200 of which are ICF accredited.
• Type of certification: Certified Professional Coach (CPC), Energy Leadership™ Index Master Practitioner (ELI-MP), and COR.E Dynamics™ Specialist, in one of four niches
• ICF certified: Yes
• Best for: Experienced coaches

2. Institute for Life Coach Training

The Institute for Life Coach Training (ILCT) has several programs and paths for different credentials and coaching specialties. It offers programs for the following coaching specialties.

• Career development coaching
• Executive and business coaching
• Relationship coaching
• Wellness coaching

At the end of the program, students receive a life coaching certificate and take the ICF exam. Pricing varies depending on the course you choose. ILCT is a good option for those who want to start small and take more courses from the same school later.

• Cost: $4,305 for the ACC path up to $7,800 for the Professional Certified Coach program
• Duration: 60 to 130 hours depending on the path
• Type of certification: ACC or PCC equivalent
• ICF certified: Yes

3. Life Coach School

Life Coach School's Coach Certification Program is a self-paced, budget-friendly option for those who want to build coaching skills without committing to a long, expensive program. Participants will learn to help others set meaningful goals, create actionable plans to achieve those goals, and develop coaching skills.

The program includes foundational modules, deep-dive coursework, and a certification exam, with 12 months of access to complete it on your own schedule.

Upon completion of the program, participants receive a certification from the Life Coach School.

• Cost: $3,000 (or four payments of $797)
• Duration: Self-paced, complete within one year of enrollment
• Type of certification: Proprietary
• ICF certified: No

4. Health Coach Institute

The Health Coach Institute's courses cover nutrition, lifestyle coaching, business development, and more. It's best for those who want to become a health and wellness coach.

Courses from the Health Coach Institute are entirely online. Still, there are opportunities to connect with others in the program. The Institute gives students access to an online library and a private Facebook group.

Trustpilot users rate the company 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on over 1,100 reviews.

One unique aspect of the certification program is addressing your self-limiting beliefs. Learning to do this personally will help you teach your own pupils to do the same.

Professional health coaches teach all Health Coach Institute courses. Parts of the program offer 1:1 instruction, so you can ask experts questions directly.

• Cost: $6,750 ($6,250 if paid in full)
• Duration: Five months
• Type of certification: Dual Health and Life Coach Certificate
• ICF certified: No (ICF-approved school; the program carries 40 ICF continuing education credits)

5. The CaPP Institute

The CaPP Institute offers several programs, but the best choice for new coaches is its Coach Training Intensive program. Unlike other coaching certifications, this is a three-day, online workshop that teaches you how to change lives as a coach.

The program focuses on psychology and coaching theory. The end of the course focuses on business development. It includes a workshop where you'll create a coaching business plan.

The Coach Training Intensive program is best for coaching beginners who want to start right away. It's also a solid option for coaches who have been out of the market for a while and want a quick refresher course.

• Cost: From $1,495 (early bird) or $1,695 standard
• Duration: Three days
• Type of certification: Certified Personal and Executive Coach
• ICF certified: No (the three-day workshop grants a Certificate of Completion with 16 ICF-approved hours; full certification requires the follow-on CPEC program)

The five programs above compared side by side:

How much does a life coach certification cost?

The cost of life coach certification programs depends on the program. Generally, accredited programs range from about $1,400 to $20,000. Some unaccredited online courses may offer life coaching programs for less than $500. However, intensive courses and those accredited by the ICF cost more.

While these prices may seem high, they could be worth the investment compared to how much life coaches make. According to ICF's 2023 Global Coaching Study, the average annual revenue for coaches in North America is $67,800, though this figure will vary based on your niche, experience level, and overhead expenses. The same study puts the average cost per coaching session at $244 globally.

Once you are ready to coach, you can keep your own overhead low by running your program online: with us, you sell coaching without a physical location.

How to choose a life coach certification program

Given all the variables at play, choosing a life coach certification program can be challenging. Answering the questions below will help you decide which coaching program is right for you.

• Is the program accredited by a reputable organization like the ICF?
• What do reviews and testimonials reveal?
• Does the life coaching program's curriculum meet your goals and objectives? Does the program align with your coaching specialty?
• Does the program include educational components such as reading, lectures, seminars, and field experiences?
• What kind of experience and qualifications do the instructors have? Based on this, will the program suit you?
• Does the program provide additional resources (i.e., networking, ongoing support, or in-person meet-ups)?
• What is the cost and time commitment? How much are you willing to invest in a life coaching program? Will it fit within your budget and lifestyle?
• What type of certification will you receive?
• What kind of follow-up or support will you get after?

Life coaching certification alternatives

If you don't think life coaching certification is right for you, don't fret. Getting certified doesn't guarantee a profitable coaching business. It's optional. People care more about results than credentials.

Here are some alternatives for life coaching certification:

Draw on real-world experience

If you've worked as a personal trainer, nutritionist, therapist, or in another role related to the coaching vertical you've selected, put that to use. Talk about your experience when interviewing new clients and include information about your past in your marketing materials. Relevant work history may get you farther than a certification.

Start coaching to build skills

You can always learn by doing, and anyone can start coaching. In the beginning, you can take on two or three clients to build experience. As you gain new skills and confidence over time, you'll be able to take on more clients or charge higher rates. If you want a structured product to sell from day one, you can create an online course or coaching program and price it around your niche.

Get referrals

Most coaches get new clients through referrals. Request Google or social media reviews from your satisfied customers and ask them to pass your name along to anyone they know in the market for services like yours. Those testimonials will do more for your credibility than any certificate would.

Ultimately, whether to pursue life coach certification is a personal decision that you should base on your circumstances and goals. Weigh the pros and cons carefully to decide what's best for you.

If you enroll in a life coach certification program, be sure it's accredited. You should also run the numbers on the course cost and outline a plan for when you'll break even in your coaching journey.

If you decide that certification isn't right for you, draw on your experiences and seek referrals to help you build your business. You can start your coaching journey today without a life coaching certification. Start a 7-day trial and build your first coaching product before committing to a plan.

Frequently asked questions about life coach certification

Do you need a certification to be a life coach?

No. Life coaching is not a regulated profession in the United States, so no certification is legally required to practice. Certification is optional and mainly helps with credibility, training, and access to higher-paying or corporate clients.

Is a life coach certification worth it?

It depends on your goals. Certification is worth it if you want structured training, a professional network, and added credibility with clients who ask for it. It is not essential if you already have relevant experience and can win clients through results and referrals.

How long does it take to become a certified life coach?

It ranges from a few days to over a year. Short intensive workshops run about three days, while ICF-accredited programs require 60 to 200-plus education hours and 100 to 2,500 hours of coaching experience depending on the credential level (ACC, PCC, or MCC).

What is the best life coach certification?

There is no single best certification. Look for programs accredited by the ICF or, for health and wellness coaching, the NBHWC, then match the program to your niche, budget, and schedule. This guide compares five accredited options across price points.

How much do life coaches make?

The average annual revenue for coaches in North America is $67,800, according to ICF's 2023 Global Coaching Study, though it varies widely by niche, experience, and how many clients you take on. The same study puts the average cost per coaching session at $244 globally.

Key terms

Life coach certification: a voluntary credential from a training program that signals a coach has completed structured education and, often, supervised coaching hours, it is not a legal requirement to practice.

ICF (International Coaching Federation): the leading accrediting body for life coaching, with three credential levels (ACC, PCC, MCC) based on training hours and logged coaching experience.

NBHWC (National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching): the accrediting body for health and wellness coaching certifications, distinct from ICF's broader life-coaching focus.

Accredited program: a certification course that has met an external body's, like the ICF or NBHWC, standards for curriculum, training hours, and assessment.

Coaching niche: the specific area a coach specializes in, such as executive, relationship, or health coaching, which shapes which certification and marketing approach fits best.

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