COMPARED WITH TEACHABLE AND THINKIFIC
Built to sell a course. An academy is most of what happens after the sale.
These are the two platforms most people mean by an online course platform, and they are good. Thinkific carries assignments, communities and live Zoom sessions from its second plan up; Teachable pays creators out in more than ninety countries. Both are built around a purchase, and an academy is not.
WHERE EACH TOOL STOPS
They own the sale and the delivery. Not the judgement.
Drawn from what each publishes, with the more generous of the two setting the rail: where Thinkific states assignments and live sessions, the category is shown as covering them.
Teachable and Thinkific: Apply to Admit, not published; Pay to Submit, in Checkout, lessons, live sessions and assignments; Assessed by staff, not published; Credential, in Completion certificates; Employer verifies, not published. Alethris: Apply to Employer verifies, in One record per learner.
THE JOINS
A buyer is not an applicant, and a completion is not a result.
Four boundaries where a course platform hands the work back to you.
Anyone who pays is in. An academy that interviews, sets a prerequisite or takes thirty people out of two hundred does that selection somewhere else, and the reason a place was given or refused never joins the record.
An application with its answers, a queue, a decision recorded against a named member of staff, and a place confirmed when the offer is accepted or its fee is paid. An offer that was running when somebody applied is honoured when the decision comes, rather than expiring while they wait for it.
An assignment can be submitted and marked complete. Which criteria it met, at what level, who decided and what the learner should change next time are not things the platform is keeping.
Rubrics with performance levels per criterion, assessment signed by the assessor assigned to the work, revision requests the learner sees, and corrections that keep what they replaced.
A certificate for completing the course attests that the course was completed. There is no page an employer can check it at, no status when it is revoked, and nothing saying what was demonstrated.
A credential issued from a completed record, with a code, a QR and a verification page carrying the issuer, the method and the competencies the academy approved.
The money is a card payment in a foreign currency, settled through a processor to a bank account. A learner sending a bank transfer, an employer sponsoring a place, or a funder paying for twenty seats has nowhere to go.
Paystack card, Pay with Transfer, a bank transfer your staff confirm against your statement, a sponsor's commitment, or a manual enrolment that records how the place is paid for.
SIDE BY SIDE
Where they stop and this starts.
Most of a course platform's feature list is in both columns. These are the rows that are not.
| TEACHABLE / THINKIFIC | ALETHRIS | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting video and lessons | The core of the product | Lessons, files and video in a versioned programme |
| Live sessions | Zoom sessions, on the higher plans | Sessions with a schedule and a register |
| Assignments | From the second plan up | With the artefacts each one requires |
| An application and an admission decision | — | On the record, with its author |
| Attendance | — | A register for every session |
| How work was judged | — | A rubric, signed by its assessor |
| Which competencies were shown | — | Recorded, with the evidence |
| Certificates | On course completion | Issued from a completed record |
| Whether an employer can check one | — | A public verification page |
| A learner paying by bank transfer | — | Evidence a finance admin approves |
| An employer or funder sponsoring a place | — | A commitment, settled with them directly |
| Reducing what a learner pays | Coupons at checkout, capped by how many may use one | A code on the application, or an automatic offer for a window, with caps and a price floor |
WHAT IT COSTS
A cut of each sale, or a plan and a choice about who collects.
Both charge a monthly plan. What happens on top of it is the difference, and so is the currency it is quoted in.
| TEACHABLE / THINKIFIC | ALETHRIS | |
|---|---|---|
| Each month | A plan, quoted in dollars | A plan in naira, by the size of your academy |
| On the entry plan | Teachable adds a transaction fee; higher plans do not | No fee tied to the plan tier |
| Using your own processor | Thinkific adds a gateway fee that varies by plan | Paystack settles to your own account |
| Where you can be paid out | Teachable Pay covers 90+ countries; elsewhere, a monthly gateway | Nigeria first |
| When you collect the money yourself | — | Recorded, with no fee |
A dollar plan, a naira business
When Teachable or Thinkific is the right answer
- You are selling a recorded course to the public, internationally, and the buyer works through it alone.
- You want the marketing in the box: landing pages, funnels, affiliates and email.
- A community matters more than a cohort — a forum people stay in, not a programme that ends.
- Most of your buyers pay by card in dollars, and none of them is going to send you a bank transfer.
These are mature products with far more polish on the selling side than Alethris has or is trying to have. If the sale is the hard part of your business, they are the better buy.
MOVING
Sell there, assess here, if that is what fits.
Nothing stops an academy selling a course on one platform and running its assessed cohort on another.
ONE
Keep the funnel
Landing pages, affiliates and the mailing list have no equivalent here and no reason to move. Coupons and timed sales now have one, so a cohort admitted here can carry its own offer rather than a code only the storefront understands.
TWO
Bring the cohort somebody has to judge
The programme where a person reads the work and stands behind a result is the one that needs a record.
THREE
The lessons come with you
Upload them into a programme with modules and lessons, versioned as editions so a running cohort is never changed underneath it.
FOUR
Collect in naira, the way learners here pay
Card, Pay with Transfer, a bank transfer your staff confirm, or a sponsor. There is no fee on money we did not collect.
Ask whether the thing you sell ends in a judgement.
If it ends when the last video is watched, a course platform is the right tool and these are two of the best. If it ends with somebody deciding whether the learner can actually do it, that decision needs somewhere to live.