Teachable charges up to 5% per transaction. Kajabi takes 0% but starts at $149/month. Thinkific's free plan limits your courses to three. Udemy, if you are selling on their marketplace, keeps 50-75% of every sale from a student who did not find you directly.
These platforms offer genuine value at the start: a structured course player, quizzes, certificates, student management, and community tools. For creators with a large catalogue and ongoing cohorts, that infrastructure pays for itself. For most independent sellers, especially those with one or two courses or live workshops, most of that infrastructure goes unused. What they are actually paying for is file hosting and a Stripe integration.
What a course sale actually requires
Strip a course down to its components and the delivery requirements are simpler than the platforms suggest:
The infrastructure most platforms charge for is mostly checkout, file hosting, and a nicer-looking student dashboard. For a course with under 200 students, a private Google Drive folder and a well-written confirmation email replicate the experience at a fraction of the cost.
Live workshops versus recorded courses
The delivery model changes what you need.
For a live workshop or session: the buyer needs a meeting link. After payment, a confirmation email sends the Zoom or Meet link, the time, and any preparation materials. The platform is irrelevant to this format. The buyer shows up, the session runs, and the recording (if any) goes to a shared folder.
For a recorded course: the buyer needs access to a folder of videos and materials. A private Google Drive, a Notion page with embedded Loom videos, or a private Vimeo collection works exactly as well as a course platform for a solo creator with one course. Students do not miss the platform features. They watch the videos and read the materials. That is the experience.
The feature most students actually use on a dedicated platform: video playback and a way to mark lessons complete. Both are available through Loom or Vimeo embeds in a Notion page at no additional cost.
If you are comparing this route with a dedicated teaching platform because of margins, the no-commission breakdown helps frame when platform fees stop making sense.
The platform path versus the direct path
Pricing courses and workshops
Course pricing follows a different logic than eBook pricing. The primary driver is not page count or video hours, it is the transformation the buyer expects. A 2-hour workshop that reliably solves a problem someone has been stuck on for months is worth more than a 6-hour course on a broadly interesting topic.
Live workshops (one session, 90 minutes to half a day): €49 to €149. The premium is for the live access, real-time Q&A, and the accountability of showing up at a scheduled time.
Recorded short courses (3-5 hours of video content, focused topic): €79 to €197. Price higher than an eBook because the format carries more perceived depth and time investment on the student's part.
Comprehensive programmes (10+ hours, multiple modules, bonuses): €197 to €497 and above. These require more social proof and a longer sales sequence to convert but are sustainable with a moderate audience.
The common mistake is pricing too low on the assumption that a lower price means more buyers. In most cases, a €27 course and a €127 course convert at similar rates from a warm audience. The €27 price communicates that the transformation is small. The €127 price communicates that the content is worth clearing a calendar for.
Your student list is an asset
The hidden cost of platform dependency is the student relationship. On Teachable, Kajabi, or Thinkific, the platform holds the student records. If the platform folds, raises prices, or changes terms, you do not automatically export your students to a new home.
On a direct setup, the buyer's email goes to your email tool (or even just your inbox) at the point of purchase. Every student you ever sell to accumulates in a list you own and control. That compound value, the ability to notify previous students of new courses, ask for testimonials, offer bundles, is worth more than any platform feature.
"The student list is not a side effect of selling a course. It is the most valuable output of the entire process. Treat the first 50 students like founding members, because that is what they are."
Where to start
You do not need to rebuild anything that currently works for you. If you are on Teachable and it is profitable, the question is not whether to leave, it is whether to route new courses through a direct setup while existing ones remain where they are.
For a creator launching a first course: start directly. Build the content in your tools of choice. Set up a product page. Connect Stripe. Write the confirmation email with the course access link. Run the first cohort. Add the student to your email list. That is the complete setup for a first course launch. If you want the product-page side of that setup spelled out, how to sell digital downloads online is the closest operational companion.