Why the cheap course platform plan is usually the expensive one

When you pick a course platform you compare the monthly plan prices. That is the wrong number. The one that decides your take-home is the per-sale transaction fee some cheap plans charge on top, and it flips the ranking the moment you have real sales.

The setup

A 200 dollar course, 50 sales a month, so 10,000 dollars in gross sales. Card processing is the usual 2.9% plus 30 cents a transaction, which costs about 305 dollars here no matter which platform you choose. So the platform decision comes down to two lines: the monthly plan price, and any per-sale platform fee.

The cheap plan that is not cheap

• Teachable Starter, 29 dollars a month, charges a 7.5% platform transaction fee. On 10,000 dollars that fee alone is 750 dollars. Take-home: about 8,916 dollars.
• Teachable Builder, 69 dollars a month, charges no platform fee. Take-home: about 9,626 dollars.
• The 69 dollar plan nets you about 710 dollars more than the 29 dollar plan, every month, because a 40 dollar price gap buys away a 750 dollar fee.

Where the flip happens

The Starter plan only wins while your sales are tiny. The 7.5% fee overtakes the 40 dollar plan gap at just 533 dollars of gross sales a month. Above that, which is almost any course actually selling, the plan with no transaction fee is the cheaper one. The headline 29 dollars is a trap that springs the moment you succeed.

The no-transaction-fee field

• Kajabi Basic, about 143 dollars a month on annual billing (179 month to month), no platform fee on its own Kajabi Payments checkout: about 9,552 dollars take-home, and it bundles email, memberships and a community. Kajabi removed its cheaper 89 dollar Kickstarter tier in January 2026, so Basic is now its entry plan.
• Thinkific Basic, 49 dollars a month, no platform fee on Thinkific Payments: about 9,646 dollars take-home, the highest of the three no-fee options here. Basic, not the 99 dollar Start plan, is the cheapest fee-free tier.
• Teachable Builder, 69 dollars: about 9,626 dollars. Thinkific Basic and Teachable Builder land within about 20 dollars of each other, so between them the choice becomes features, not fees; Kajabi sits a little lower on take-home but costs more up front for the all-in-one bundle.

One caveat on those zero-fee take-homes: they hold while you use each platform own built-in checkout. Thinkific and Kajabi both waive the platform fee on their native processors, Thinkific Payments and Kajabi Payments, but route sales through your own Stripe or PayPal instead and each adds a per-sale surcharge that is steepest on the cheapest plan and tapers on higher tiers. So the fee-free figure for Thinkific Basic or Kajabi Basic assumes the native checkout, not an outside gateway, the same own-gateway surcharge Kajabi drew attention to when it introduced one.

The other lever on the plan line: annual vs month to month

Each plan price above is a headline figure, but every one of these platforms sells the same plan at two prices: a lower rate if you pay for a full year up front, and a higher one month to month. On Teachable the gap is about 22 percent, roughly 240 dollars a year. Builder is 69 dollars a month on annual billing but 89 month to month. Thinkific runs a similar spread: Basic is about 49 dollars month to month and drops to about 36 on annual billing. Kajabi Basic is the 143 dollars a month on annual billing already used here versus 179 month to month. So annual billing shaves roughly a fifth to a quarter off the plan line on all three.

The catch is what a year up front commits you to, and here the platforms split sharply on whether you can back out. Teachable gives a 30-day money-back guarantee on new annual plans, so you can start annual and still get a full refund inside the first month. Kajabi runs a strict no-refund policy on its plans, so an annual commitment there is money you will not get back if the fit turns out wrong after the trial window. Thinkific handles its own plan refunds case by case rather than a blanket guarantee. So the annual discount is close to free on Teachable, where a bad fit is refundable early, and more of a real bet on Kajabi, where it is not.

None of this changes the take-home ranking, because a percentage platform fee still dwarfs the plan line once sales are real. But when you are choosing between two no-fee plans that land within 20 dollars of each other, the annual discount and whether you can get it back are exactly the tiebreaker the sticker price hides. Pay monthly while you are still testing whether a platform fits, and switch to annual once you are sure.

The bigger line if you sell to EU buyers: VAT

The worked example is in dollars and counts only card processing. If you sell to consumers in the EU there is a line that dwarfs any platform fee: VAT. A pre-recorded, on-demand course is an electronically supplied service, so once your cross-border sales to EU consumers pass 10,000 euros in a year you charge VAT at the buyer country rate, not your own. Those rates run from about 17 percent in Luxembourg to 27 percent in Hungary, with Belgium at 21 percent. If your listed price is the same for everyone, that VAT comes out of your margin, so a 21 percent rate is a far bigger cut than a 7.5 percent platform fee.

Below 10,000 euros of cross-border EU sales a year you charge your home country rate. Above it you register once for the One Stop Shop (OSS) and file a single quarterly return covering every EU country, rather than registering in each one. That threshold is being narrowed from January 2027, so more sellers will owe destination VAT sooner. Live courses with real human interaction are treated differently from an automated one, so this applies to on-demand content.

Who actually does the VAT work differs by platform, and for an EU seller that can outweigh a few dollars of take-home:

• Teachable can act as the merchant of record on its native gateways (teachable:pay and its Monthly Payment Gateway): it collects and remits EU and UK VAT for you. Use a custom payment gateway instead and that job is back on you.
• Kajabi gives you VAT tools such as rate calculation and tax invoices, but you stay the taxable person, so registering for OSS and remitting is still your job.
• Thinkific does not collect and remit EU VAT for you natively, so sellers typically connect an external merchant of record or handle OSS themselves.

The point

Once you are past a few hundred dollars of monthly sales, a percentage transaction fee costs far more than a higher flat plan price, so compare take-home, not sticker price. The right plan is the cheapest one that still charges zero per-sale fee and has the features you need, and if you sell into the EU, whether the platform carries the VAT job is part of that features question. Put your own price and volume in and read the take-home, because the crossover moves with both.