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Comparing Kajabi, Teachable, and WordPress: Which Platform is Best for Selling Courses?
When you are deciding where to sell courses online, most platform comparisons focus on features, design, and ease of setup. Those questions matter, but there is a more pointed one that surfaces the moment real money changes hands: which platform takes the smallest cut, gives you the cleanest checkout experience, and lets you price the way you actually want? Kajabi, Teachable, and WordPress each answer that differently, and the differences compound fast at any meaningful sales volume.
This post focuses specifically on the selling side - transaction fees, checkout flows, pricing flexibility, and what you keep per sale. For a broader look covering LMS features, design tools, support quality, and integrations, read our full Kajabi vs WordPress vs Teachable comparison.
What selling courses actually costs on each platform
The sticker price of a platform rarely tells the full story. Transaction fees, payment processor margins, and plan-gating on key selling features - coupons, upsells, affiliates, custom domains - all affect what you keep. Here is how each platform breaks down on that dimension specifically.
Kajabi: 0% transaction fees, high monthly floor
Kajabi charges 0% transaction fees on every plan. That is a real advantage over Teachable’s entry tier. The cost is the monthly base: plans start at $69/month for a single-product Kickstarter tier, $149/month at Basic (3 products), $199/month for Growth (15 products), and $399/month for Pro. You pay a fixed monthly fee regardless of revenue, which works in your favor as volume grows. Below a certain threshold, that fixed cost is expensive relative to what a transaction-fee model would cost on the same revenue.
Kajabi’s checkout handles one-time purchases, subscriptions, payment plans, and post-purchase upsells without additional plugins. Order bumps are available at the Growth tier and above. Stripe and PayPal are the supported processors. Coupon codes work across all paid plans. Notably, Kajabi gates the number of active products per plan - if you are selling more than three courses at the same time, you need Growth at minimum.
| Plan | Monthly cost | Transaction fee | Active products | Order bumps / upsells |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kickstarter | $69 | 0% | 1 | No |
| Basic | $149 | 0% | 3 | No |
| Growth | $199 | 0% | 15 | Yes |
| Pro | $399 | 0% | 100 | Yes |
Teachable: low entry price, but transaction fees cut into early revenue
Teachable’s Basic plan at $39/month looks reasonable until the 5% transaction fee enters the picture. On a $200 course, Teachable takes $10 before Stripe’s payment processing fee. Sell ten courses a month and that is $100 gone before you see it. The fee is easy to underweight when you are projecting revenue on a spreadsheet and easy to feel acutely once money starts moving.
The Pro plan at $119/month removes transaction fees entirely and unlocks graded quizzes, completion certificates, and an affiliate program. For most sellers running any consistent volume, Pro is effectively the minimum workable tier - Basic is better treated as a trial period than a permanent home.
Teachable’s checkout handles one-time payments, subscriptions, and payment plans. Coupon codes are available on paid plans. Post-purchase upsells are limited at lower tiers. The free plan has a 10% transaction fee, which makes it useful for testing but not for selling at scale.
| Plan | Monthly cost | Transaction fee | Affiliate program | Custom domain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10% | No | No |
| Basic | $39 | 5% | No | Yes |
| Pro | $119 | 0% | Yes | Yes |
| Business | $299 | 0% | Yes | Yes |
WordPress: 0% platform fees, full pricing control
WordPress charges no transaction fees. The platform is free and open-source. Your actual costs are hosting (typically $5 to $30/month on a managed WordPress host), an LMS or course plugin, and a payment plugin. Stripe and PayPal fees apply as they would on any platform, but no additional layer goes to WordPress itself.
On a $500 course, Teachable’s Basic tier costs you $25 per sale before payment processing. On WordPress, that $25 stays with you every time. That gap widens as your price point or volume increases.
WordPress also gives you pricing flexibility that SaaS platforms cannot match by design. You can sell in any currency, run percentage or fixed-amount coupons, create time-limited offers, bundle courses with memberships, and set up affiliate programs using whatever tools your situation calls for. None of that is gated behind a plan tier, because you own the stack. For more on building a sustainable course business on WordPress, see our guide to running an online course business.
Learnomy: the free WordPress way to sell courses with no platform fees
If you are building on WordPress and want to start selling courses without paying for a premium LMS plugin upfront, Learnomy is the option worth knowing about. It is a free WordPress plugin from Wbcom Designs that handles course creation, student management, and selling in one place.
The setup is direct: install Learnomy on a WordPress site, connect Stripe or PayPal, build your course, and start selling. There are no per-sale fees, no Learnomy branding on your checkout, and no plan ceiling on the number of courses you can sell. Students get a dashboard to track their progress. You get enrollment data and payment history in the WordPress admin.
Learnomy supports one-time purchases, subscription pricing, and course bundles. The checkout runs on your domain, which means your students never leave your site to complete a purchase.
You can download Learnomy from the Wbcom Designs store or try the platform before installing via the live Learnomy demo - it spins up a pre-configured WordPress environment with no account required.
For course creators who want a more established, heavily documented LMS with an advanced quiz engine, gradebook, and third-party integration ecosystem, LearnDash is the strong paid option in the WordPress space. It pairs well with most WordPress membership and ecommerce plugins if you need a more elaborate selling setup.
Checkout experience: what the purchase moment actually looks like
Fees are one part of the selling equation. The checkout flow itself affects conversion, and each platform handles it differently.
- Kajabi has a native, polished checkout that handles order bumps and post-purchase upsells on higher plans. Pages are customizable within Kajabi’s builder. The checkout is clean and conversion-focused by default.
- Teachable has a simpler checkout optimized for getting a sale across the line quickly. Post-purchase upsells are limited at lower plan tiers. The design is functional rather than highly customizable.
- WordPress with Learnomy or LearnDash gives you full control over the checkout experience. You can use WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, or a dedicated checkout plugin alongside the LMS. That means A/B-testable checkout pages, cart abandonment recovery, any payment gateway your processor supports, and no restrictions on how you structure offers or upsells.
The tradeoff is setup time. Kajabi and Teachable work out of the box. WordPress requires assembling the right combination of plugins, though for most setups that is a one-time configuration rather than ongoing overhead.
Which platform fits your selling situation
If you are launching a first course and want to validate demand before committing to infrastructure, Teachable’s Basic tier at $39/month gets you a functional selling setup with a manageable cost of entry. Build in the 5% fee when you set your price, and plan to move to Pro once you see consistent revenue.
Kajabi’s flat monthly fee starts to make financial sense once your monthly revenue is high enough that a percentage-based fee would cost more than Kajabi’s base. It is also the right fit if you want a single dashboard for your course, email marketing, and checkout without assembling separate tools.
WordPress with Learnomy is the lowest-cost option on a per-sale basis and suits anyone who already has a WordPress site, wants full ownership of customer data, or needs pricing flexibility that no SaaS platform’s plan structure allows. The investment is your own time to configure and maintain the site.
For a complete breakdown covering course creation tools, design flexibility, student engagement features, support, and integrations across all three platforms, read our full Kajabi vs WordPress vs Teachable comparison.
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