5 BEST Online Course Platforms in 2026 | Kajabi vs. Thinkific vs. Teachable

I built a 6-figure business selling online courses and coaching, and I've used or tested most of the major online course platforms out there. There are a ton of options to choose from, and it can feel really overwhelming to know which one is the best for you. And picking the wrong one can cost you months of progress and thousands of dollars. So in this video, I've put together my top 5 best online course platforms for 2026, and more importantly, what each one does best and who they're best for. Because the truth is, there's no one perfect platform for everybody, and they're all gonna try and sell you on that. There's only the perfect platform for your business, your budget, and your goals right now. And keep in mind, I have not mastered every single one of these. This is not going to be a super deep dive into every single feature of every single part of these programs, but we're going to look at it from an actual course creator's eyes and the things that you should really consider if you're going to use these different tools. But I do have experience in using each one of these. Now, before we get into our top 5 platforms, why should you use an online course platform versus a course marketplace like Udemy or Skillshare? Using your own online course platform is the difference between you owning your business and just kind of renting a spot in somebody else's business. On a marketplace like Udemy or Skillshare, they control everything from your pricing, your customer data, your branding, and the student experience. They keep your student emails and data, so you can't even follow up with these people in the future to sell them more courses or offers. On top of that, you're competing with hundreds of other similar courses on one single page. And the way that these platforms are set up is that they take the bulk of the revenue. So most instructors typically earn like $3 to $10 per sale. So even with 100 students at that price, you'd be walking away with like $300 to $1,000 $10,000 total. But when you use your own online course platform, you own the brand, you have direct access to the audience, and you keep the revenue. So let's say you sold that same exact course for $100 and you got 100 students. That's going to put you at like $10,000. And if it was $200, now you're looking at like $20,000 in revenue. So you're putting in the same amount of work to build your course but getting a completely different outcome. The biggest thing to know is that if you use a marketplace, you could get more visibility, but that doesn't mean that you're going to grow your business faster. With your own online course platform, you have ownership, you control the brand, you control the student experience, you make way more money, and you get to keep access to your audience, which is invaluable. So now that you know the difference and why this is so important, let's get into the top 5 best online course platforms in 2026, starting with Kajabi. So Kajabi has become this all-in-one tool, and it was kind of the pioneer in the whole all-in-one space. A lot of these tools I'm going to mention are going to promise that they are all-in-one, but a lot of them don't do it very well. Kajabi, on the other hand, is one that does this exceptionally well. So if you're a course creator, a coach, or an expert and you want to sell your knowledge on the internet and just have one tool where you sign in, one username, one password with literally everything you could ever need to sell your programs and your coaching, Kajabi is hands down the best tool to do it. In terms of pricing, Kajabi has the Kickstarter, Basic, the Growth, and then the Pro plan. Most people are not going to have to use a Pro plan. A lot of people fall into the Basic or the Growth section, but the Kickstarter plan is great for getting started. In terms of price, we're looking at $89 a month all the way up to $500 a month. I'm on the growth plan, so it's $250 a month, but I like to pay yearly because I save money that way. Now look, Kajabi is not perfect. Some of the biggest drawbacks are one, the price. People say it's really high, it's really expensive, and I don't even know if it's going to work for me. I personally spent years paying for Kajabi and I did not make any money, but every single month I'm seeing that $200 per month going through. But when you understand the platform and you get used to it, you can make money really quick with it. It's just about understanding how platform works and how marketing works in general. But they truly do give you all of the different tools you could ever want. Another downside to Kajabi that people can complain about is the fact that you are limited on products. Now, I personally like this. I don't like the unlimited product feature that a lot of these platforms will give you. Forcing you to have fewer products means that you have to put more energy and attention into that product. So if you play your cards right, even on the Kickstarter plan, you can create a good 5 or even 6-figure income. You just have to know what you're doing. Another one of the best things that Kajabi does is that they have 0% transaction fees, so you get to keep all the money you make. The only kind of transaction fee you're going to have to pay is the typical 3% transaction fee for whenever you make a sale through a payment processing service like Stripe or PayPal. But let's take a look at Kajabi under the hood. This is what it looks like inside of the dashboard. This is the tool that I have fallen in love with and that I use in my own business. I run my entire 6-figure business solely inside of Kajabi. I do not use other tools for landing pages, checkout pages, delivering my course or anything. All of it is in here. So inside of the dashboard you have your products, sales, your marketing, your website with landing pages, contacts, your analytics. Literally everything is inside of here. You get a ton of different templates to choose from, from sales pages to cart sales, podcasts, link in bio, thank you pages, opt-in pages, literally any kind of page you could ever want. All of it is inside of Kajabi and they look awesome. They look beautiful. They're very intuitive and the builder is very easy. The course builder is very intuitive. It's easy to use and really simple for uploading your lessons. You can turn on comments, add certificates. You can plug in your videos up here, have a description where you can link to different worksheets or anything you want, downloadables, and you can even have automations inside of each lesson. So if somebody finishes a lesson, you can send them an email and say, hey, just wanna say you're doing a great job. Or you can make another offer. On top of that, you also get a handful of different themes that you can use, but by far the best one is the Momentum theme. This is the one that I use for every single one of my courses. It makes it easy to navigate your course content from a user perspective. So when they click on a lesson, they can play the video and then they can get a description down below, add the downloads, whatever it is that you want. Kajabi really does a great job at delivering on their promise of being an all-in-one tool. I'd say the biggest kind of deal breaker here is the price, and it can be a bit of a heavy learning curve for you if you're very new to online course platforms. If you all-in-one aspect sounds awesome to you like it did to me, then the best thing you can do is to give Kajabi a try. As a Kajabi partner, I can give you a 30-day totally free trial compared to the normal 14-day free trial you would get through Kajabi's site. And when you use my link, I'm also going to grant you instant access to a course I made that's all about Kajabi. In this course, I'm pulling back the curtain on everything that I've done to build a 6-figure online business using Kajabi, and I'm going to show you screen by screen how to set up your business in the same exact way just for whatever it is that you're offering. On top of that, you're going to get a one-on-one private coaching session with me, and I'll answer any questions you have about your overall strategy or Kajabi itself. To get all the details, you can click the first link in the description or visit profityourknowledge.com/kajabi. Next up, we have Teachable. Teachable's been on the market for a long time. It was the first platform that I personally used when I was really getting serious about using an actual course creation platform. In my opinion, Teachable is great if you're a first-time course creator or you're new to this online business game and you want an affordable tool that's very simple and easy to use. The biggest drawback I would say with Teachable is that it's kind of basic, and a lot of times you're gonna need to use third-party tools, which means more tech headaches using Zapier and that kind of stuff. I used Teachable for a while, and I've helped other people build their businesses using Teachable, and it works, but in my opinion, it's kind of clunky. It's really basic, and even though they say that they integrate well with third-party tools, it's kind of a headache. The tools don't communicate as well as a tool like Kajabi because with Kajabi, everything's on one single server. So it all communicates very well. But again, if it's your first course and you're kind of getting your feet wet with this, you just want like an easy course platform as a side hustle. Teachable is a great option in terms of pricing. It's a lot more affordable than Kajabi. They have a starter plan where you get $39 per month, and this is on the monthly plan. Builder at $89 a month, Growth at $189 a month, and then they have the Advance at $400 a month. The biggest thing to pay attention to here is that there's a 7.5% transaction fee for every single course that you sell. Now that's a big percentage that ends up adding up a lot, especially if you're selling a lot of different programs. So until you're paying $90 a month, that's when you can remove that 0% transaction fee. So if you sold one of your courses at $100, they're gonna automatically take $7 to $8 right off the bat. And on top of that, you're also gonna have your payment processor, which is an extra 3%. So this really does add up over time. When you look at the backend, it's pretty simple. It's really easy to navigate. And again, if you're very new to this, this is a great starting platform for you. The website builder is very basic and it's good for just kind of getting started, but there's not a whole lot of customization compared to a tool like Kajabi. But the course builder is very easy to navigate. Creating lessons is really simple, and from a user perspective, it's very easy to navigate for your students. They have a text box down at the bottom. It's a little cramped down here where the button is, and that's just kind of the way it's laid out. But I really like how they've laid out the course lessons off to the side. Just as a natural default. So where Teachable really shines to me is that it's very simple. It's very beginner friendly in terms of getting set up and publishing your first course. But the biggest downside to me is that the tools are pretty weak. You're going to have to use third-party tools like MailChimp and Zapier and stuff to help you with your marketing efforts, which doesn't make it as good of like an all-in-one platform, even though it will kind of tell you that it is an all-in-one platform. So if you want to just get your first product out there fast and kind of get your feet wet in the whole online course creation space, Teachable is a great option for you. It's a very low learning curve, but you're probably going to outgrow it. So next up we have Thinkific. Now Thinkific is an awesome course creation platform in my opinion. I think that Thinkific is great if you're just trying to host a course somewhere. They tell you that they give you marketing assets, you get a website and landing pages and all that kind of stuff, but it does not really shine as an all-in-one platform like Kajabi does. That's why I put Kajabi as the best all-in-one. However, if you have your website and business built on other tools and you just want to introduce a course with a really good learning management Thinkific is definitely the best tool that I would recommend. The pricing is super fair. It's not crazy at all. On the basic plan, it's $50 a month. The Start, which is the most popular plan, $100 a month, and then Growth is $200 per month. But most people are gonna go with the Basic or the Start plan. There's no transaction fees or weird hidden stuff. Again, no matter what, you're gonna have to pay a payment processing fee of 3%. But even on the basic plan, you get unlimited courses, you get a community, digital downloads, you get some extra tools to help you in terms of selling your course. The course builder itself is very easy to navigate. They use simple language like add a lesson here, add a new chapter, which is a collection of lessons, and they give you the dropdown. You can adjust your pricing and what happens after the purchase. You can also set up a drip schedule, so when people get access to this first module, as soon as they finish, then you can grant them access to the next module, which helps with people actually finishing your course. From a user's perspective, Thinkific does an awesome job at making their course platform easy to navigate. You have your video lessons, you can add text underneath, The dropdown menu is built in automatically. You don't have to pay for any extra templates or anything like that. This is all built inside of Thinkific. And that's why I believe that Thinkific stands as a powerful course-only platform. It's affordable, it's got a great user experience, and it's very easy to navigate for you as the creator. The biggest deal breaker to me with Thinkific is that there's not a really good marketing ecosystem and a lot of tools that can help you have that all-in-one feature if that's something you're looking for. So if you just wanna host your course on a really solid platform, I would go with Thinkific. Just keep in mind that you're gonna need to use some extra tools to market your course. And next up we have Systeme.io. Systeme.io really blew me away. It is an all-in-one marketing platform that just works. At least that's what they say on their website. But it really is. I would say if you're a beginner, you're getting into this game and you're really on a budget but you want that all-in-one kind of feel, Systeme.io is by far the best tool that I would recommend for that. I mean, look at the pricing plans. They have a freemium option which is literally $0 to start using this platform and you can host your course. You can even start making sales on the free plan. It's crazy. And then they have Startup at $17 a month, Webinar at $47, and the Unlimited at $97 per month. You get 2,000 contacts on the free plan, unlimited emails that you can send from inside of the platform. You get automations, workflows, 3 different sales funnels, sales funnel steps, 15. That's plenty of sales funnel steps. Most solid sales funnels will have anywhere from 3 to 5. You get deadline funnels built into this, unlimited file storage space, which is awesome to look for because if you have to pay for bandwidth, that racks up the price significantly. You get upsells and order bumps and 0% transaction fees. And again, I'm talking about the freemium plan. That is insane. The course builder itself is really easy to navigate. You can add a module or like this dropdown and collection of lessons if you want. You publish them. There's a lot of options for customization with text and headings and content boxes, audio carousels, a lot of things that you can add underneath downloadables. The course player is easy to navigate with a dropdown off to the side. You can even edit the theme settings, which isn't gonna give you a lot of customization in terms of the overall feel and like the lessons being off to the side on one side or another, but you can change up your colors and things. So not a crazy amount of customization, but I think they've done a really good job. At making this just a solid user experience right out of the box. So it's pretty basic, but it's very functional. Where Systeme.io really stands out to me is that you get free funnels. Literally, the freemium plan blows my mind. You get email, membership, your website, landing pages, all that kind of stuff. It is more of an all-in-one platform. To me, the biggest dealbreaker is that it's a little bit of a clunky design and you get kind of limited customization with the overall business. But for what you're paying for, who cares? So for me, I'm putting Systeme.io as the best budget-friendly platform for course creators. So next up we have Circle. If you're a type of creator who wants to have your course content there, but you really care about community-first experiences, Circle is the best platform that I would recommend for you. It is best for memberships, group programs, and communities. The pricing plans they have are kind of similar across the board. The Professional plan, which is their lower plan, is at $89 per month. Business plan is at $200 per month, and then Enterprise at $419 per month. Obviously you can try it out for 14 days totally free. One big thing you have to pay attention to is if you're trying to use the email hub, which is a key piece in selling your online courses and staying in touch with your audience, you're going to have to pay more depending on the contacts that you have. So let's say that you had 2,000 contacts. You're going to have to pay an extra $40 per month on top of whichever plan you decide to go with. This is where it's really important to keep your email list clean so you're only having the best quality people on that list. Because depending on the platform you use, like this one, you have to pay for that extra storage. So if you have 20,000 people on your email list, but you're only getting like a 10% open rate, that means you have to clean your list. Otherwise you're paying an extra $150 per month for people who aren't even engaged on top of your $89 or whatever plan you decide to pick. Very, very important and worth paying attention to, especially if you're on a budget. The dashboard is incredibly basic and they give you some help in terms of getting started. You can reach out, you can get in contact with the people on the team and stuff. It's not as straightforward in my opinion as like Kajabi or Thinkific. But when you click here to edit your lessons, the editor is pretty simple. You can add a new lesson underneath or a quiz even underneath your different sections or modules that you have. The lesson builder is super basic and it's almost a little too basic to where if you don't know what you're doing, it's easy to kind of get lost here. But keep in mind that where Circle really shines is in the communities more than just the course content. They provide courses because it's good to have course content with your community so that they can learn inside of your community. But Circle is primarily built for the community aspect. This is what it looks like from a user perspective. You have the lesson, you can add obviously a lot more text. This is just a simple example. And then this time compared to the other tools, the lessons are off to the right with a little dropdown, which definitely feels different. But you know what? It gets the job done. So to me, where Circle really stands out is in the community spaces, in the live rooms, in the engagement tools with keeping your community coming back and wanting to continue learning from you in terms of hosting a course. The courses are just kind of there as like a side thing. It's not really their core focus. Like if you use Thinkific, for example, if you're just trying to host a course, I would not really recommend Circle. But if you're trying to really focus on a community and just include some course content, Circle could be a great option. That's why I'm going to put Circle as our best community-based platform for course creators. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I'm a little bit biased because I've personally found Kajabi to be the best tool for me and my business. And if you're leaning more towards that all-in-one aspect like Kajabi, but you want to see more about how it works, watch this video next and I'll show you behind the scenes on exactly how I built my 6-figure online business on Kajabi. I hope this video helped you in deciding which kind of course platform that you really want to focus on based on wherever you're at right now. If you have any questions, leave a comment down below, and if this really was helpful, please give it a thumbs up. It really helps grow the channel and promote this out to more people. But as always, take what you learned here, get out there, make something happen. I'll see you in the next one.