Best Website Companies for Teachers Running an Online Course in 2026

A teacher deciding to sell an online course faces a choice most guides skip over. Do you rent space on someone else's platform, or build something that's actually yours?

The answer changes what you pay, who owns your content, and what happens if you leave. A platform that takes a cut of every sale looks free at first. It rarely stays that way once enrollments start coming in.

This list compares seven companies teachers can use to get a course online in 2026. We checked pricing and transaction fees directly against each company's own site this month. One of them is us, you'll see the disclosure when you get there.

What are the best website companies for a teacher's online course?

At a glance: how the top course platforms compare on price, fees, and core strength.

Short version: Flashcloud, Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia, LearnWorlds, and Mighty Networks all serve teachers building a paid course. Each solves a different part of the problem.

Six of them are hosted platforms. They bundle a checkout, a student dashboard, and a page builder into one subscription.

Flashcloud takes the other route. It hosts a self-owned site built on Moodle, the open-source learning platform behind more than 146,000 registered sites worldwide. There's no revenue share, and no lock-in to someone else's storefront.

Prices above are entry-tier rates published on each company's own site, checked in September 2026. Every platform here except Flashcloud charges a percentage of sales on at least one tier, and Mighty Networks charges one on every tier it sells. We break down exactly where, in each section below.

What actually matters when you're picking one

A sticker price only tells part of the story. A few questions matter more than the monthly fee on its own.

• Who owns the content. On a hosted platform, your videos and student list live inside their system. On a self-hosted site, the files and database are yours.
• What cut comes out of every sale. Some platforms charge a flat monthly fee only. Others add a percentage that can outgrow the monthly fee fast.
• Whether it's your whole website, or just a course page. A few of these double as a full site with a blog. Others expect you to link in from somewhere else.
• What happens if you leave. Exporting a student list and course files is easy on some platforms, and genuinely hard on others. Ask before you commit a year of content.
• How the price behaves as you grow. A flat monthly fee stays predictable. A percentage-of-sales fee means your biggest month is also your most expensive one.

1. Flashcloud: no cut, no lock-in, own the whole site

With Flashcloud, the teacher owns every layer — domain, data, content, and checkout.

Heads up: Flashcloud is our own company, so we're not a neutral voice on this one. We've tried to hold the other six to the same standard we'd want applied to us.

Every other company on this list hands a teacher a storefront. Then it takes a cut of what sells inside it.

Flashcloud's approach is different. It hosts a website you actually own, built on Moodle, the same platform behind over 525 million user accounts worldwide.

What it does

Moodle installs through a one-click setup, or our team will install and configure it for you at no charge, which is what most people choose. PHP and cron come already configured the way Moodle expects.

If a teacher has no site at all, the team also builds a free handcrafted landing page. A real person designs it, not a template or an AI generator. Course content, quizzes, grading, and certificates all run through Moodle itself.

What you'll pay

The Start plan runs $2.79/mo on a 12-month term, with 25 GB of storage. It renews at $9.99/mo.

Grow adds unlimited websites and 50 GB for $3.79/mo, renewing at $11.99/mo. That's useful for a teacher running a course site plus a school page. No plan here takes a percentage of any sale, ever.

The trade-off

Moodle ships with one payment method built in: PayPal, and nothing else. That has been true of every release since the payment subsystem arrived in Moodle 3.10, so it is not a temporary gap. Our Moodle hosting requirements guide covers sizing a plan around your course, and our comparison of Moodle hosts covers where to run it.

Accepting Stripe or card payments directly needs a community-built plugin. The one most people use is free, maintained by Alex Morris, and installed on roughly 1,900 sites, but it is not built by Moodle HQ and it needs installing rather than switching on. That is a genuine extra step the hosted platforms on this list skip entirely, and it is the honest cost of owning the whole stack instead of renting a pre-built checkout.

Who it fits

There is no free trial, which is worth naming since every other platform here has one. What Flashcloud has instead is an anytime money-back guarantee: cancel at any point in your initial term and the unused portion is refunded prorated. On a multi-year plan that window is longer than any trial on this list.

This fits a teacher who already sells resources elsewhere, worksheets, lesson plans, a newsletter. They don't want a platform taking a cut of a new video course too.

It also suits a school running a paid enrichment class. The site needs to stay the institution's property long after one teacher moves on.

2. Teachable: turnkey checkout, a real fee at the entry tier

Teachable positions itself around "human-led learning." Its own about page puts that number at over 150,000 experts and businesses, checked September 2026.

What it does

Everything a teacher needs to sell a course lives inside one system. Video hosting, quizzes, certificates, a mobile app, and a checkout all come standard.

There's no server to configure and nothing to install. Sign up, upload content, and the storefront is already there.

What you'll pay

Starter runs $39/mo, or $29/mo billed annually. It includes a 7.5% transaction fee on every sale. Builder jumps to $89/mo ($69/mo annually) and drops that fee to 0%, though with a qualifier the plan cards leave out: the 0% applies only when you use teachable:pay or Teachable's Monthly Payment Gateway. Route payments elsewhere and the fee returns.

That 7.5% fee matters more than it first looks. A teacher selling $600 a month on Starter pays about $45 in platform fees alone, on top of card processing.

Cross roughly $667 a month in sales, and Builder's flat $89 costs less than Starter's cut.

The trade-off

The jump from Starter to a 0%-fee tier is steep. That's $50 more a month just to stop losing a slice of every sale.

A teacher testing a first course pays that fee whether it sells five copies or five hundred.

Who it fits

Teachable suits a teacher who wants a working storefront on day one. It's a strong fit for a course built around video lessons and a certificate at the end.

3. Thinkific: no revenue share, but extras lock behind higher plans

Thinkific calls itself a "learning commerce platform." Its customer list includes Hootsuite, ActiveCampaign, and the University of Oxford, per its site checked September 2026.

What it does

Course building, a community feed, and checkout all live in one dashboard. Basic supports up to 10,000 students and one community space.

Checkout, coupons, and abandoned-cart emails come included from the start.

What you'll pay

Basic runs $54/mo, or $40/mo billed annually. Start, the "most popular" tier, runs $109/mo ($82/mo annually) and unlocks graded assignments and certificates.

Grow runs $219/mo ($164/mo annually) and removes Thinkific's branding entirely.

The transaction fee needs care here, because Thinkific's pricing page and its help documentation say different things. The pricing page implies no platform fee. A linked help article sets out a 5% fee on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow for anyone taking payments through Stripe rather than Thinkific Payments, in the US, Canada, UK and EU. Use Thinkific Payments and it really is 0% on every tier. Use Stripe and it is not.

The trade-off

Certificates and graded assignments don't unlock until the $109/mo Start tier. That's a real gap for a classroom teacher who expects grading by default.

Basic covers a simple video course well. A teacher who needs to grade student work will outgrow it fast. And if you'd rather use your own Stripe account than Thinkific's payment processor, check the fee table before assuming 0%.

Who it fits

Thinkific fits a teacher building toward something bigger than one video course. Think a certification program, a multi-course school, or training sold to an organization.

4. Kajabi: the most complete toolkit, at the highest starting price

Kajabi offers the most features but comes with the steepest starting price.

Kajabi describes itself as "the operating system for human expertise." It bundles courses with email marketing, a CRM, and community tools most teachers pay for separately elsewhere.

What it does

Beyond course hosting, Kajabi includes email campaigns, a sales pipeline, and memberships in one subscription. For a teacher juggling a separate email tool, that consolidation is the entire pitch.

What you'll pay

Basic starts at $179/mo, or $143/mo billed annually. That's the highest entry price on this list by a wide margin.

Growth runs $249/mo ($199/mo annually) with 25,000 contacts. Pro runs $499/mo ($399/mo annually), with unlimited products and three separate websites.

Kajabi Payments costs 2.9% plus 30 cents per sale on Basic, easing to 2.8% on Growth and 2.7% on Pro. That is ordinary card-processing territory. Route payments through any other provider except PayPal and Kajabi adds its own cut on top: 2% on Basic, 1% on Growth, 0.5% on Pro. Worth knowing because Kajabi's pricing page headline reads "No hidden fees. No revenue sharing" directly above the table that sets out those percentages.

The trade-off

$179/mo is a real commitment before a single course has sold. A teacher testing whether a course will work is paying for a full marketing suite they may not use yet.

The trial is 14 days rather than the 30 some competitors offer, and Kajabi asks for card details at signup even though nothing is charged on day one. A 30-day money-back guarantee sits behind it.

Who it fits

Kajabi fits a teacher already running a real business around their expertise. Coaching calls, a newsletter, a membership, one bill instead of five.

5. Podia: the simplest pricing here, with a fee worth watching

Podia has run since 2014 without outside venture funding. Its pricing page frames that as a deliberate choice to build for creators, not growth targets.

What it does

Courses, downloadable products, coaching calls, and a basic community all sit inside one plan. The entry Mover tier supports up to 50 products and 500 videos.

That's enough for most teachers' first course by a wide margin.

What you'll pay

Mover runs $49/mo, or $42/mo billed annually, and includes a 5% transaction fee on every sale. Shaker runs $99/mo ($84/mo annually) with that fee removed entirely. Earthquaker runs $179/mo ($150/mo annually) with unlimited everything, also fee-free.

Do the fee math the same way as Teachable's. Once monthly sales pass roughly $1,000 on Mover, Shaker's flat fee costs less than Mover's 5%.

One detail in Podia's favour that few competitors match: the free trial needs no credit card at all. Podia's own wording is that there's "no need to enter a credit card or pick a plan" to start.

The trade-off

The 5% on Mover is the thing to watch. It applies to every sale from the first one, so a teacher testing a course pays it whether five copies sell or five hundred.

Podia's refund terms are also tighter than most here: refunds are available only within 72 hours of a payment, and there are no partial refunds on annual plans.

Who it fits

Podia suits a teacher who wants one simple platform for a course plus a few extras. A workbook, a template pack, nothing complicated to manage.

6. LearnWorlds: an AI-assisted builder with a per-enrollment fee

LearnWorlds calls itself an "AI-powered LMS." Its customer list includes large organizations like Adidas and Honda, alongside course creators, per its own site checked September 2026.

What it does

An AI tool drafts a course outline from a short description, which a teacher can then edit. White-label branding at higher tiers lets a school remove any trace of LearnWorlds.

What you'll pay

Starter runs $29/mo ($24/mo annually), the lowest sticker price on this list. It adds a $5 fee for every paid enrollment, on a plan capped at 1,000 monthly active learners.

Pro Trainer runs $99/mo ($79/mo annually), with that per-enrollment fee removed entirely. Do the math before picking Starter: at $5 a head, 14 enrollments already cost $70 in fees.

Cross that number, and Pro Trainer's flat $99 becomes the cheaper plan.

The trade-off

A $29 sticker price works for a tiny pilot course and stops working quickly after that. Fifty paid enrollments cost $250 in fees alone on Starter, which is more than two months of Pro Trainer.

Worth noting that LearnWorlds' own FAQ says "There are no hidden or extra fees. The pricing you see is what you pay," on the same page where Starter carries that $5-per-enrollment charge.

Who it fits

LearnWorlds fits a teacher confident their course will draw real enrollment numbers. Budget for Pro Trainer from the start, rather than testing on the cheaper tier first.

7. Mighty Networks: courses inside an ongoing community

Mighty Networks sits at the crossroads of structured learning and ongoing community.

Mighty Networks leans toward community over course catalog. Video lessons live alongside member discussions, live events, and profiles, closer to a membership than a course landing page.

What it does

A course sits inside a broader space where students interact with each other, not just the content. Live streaming and discussion threads come standard, even on the entry plan.

What you'll pay

Launch runs $95/mo, or $79/mo billed annually, with a 2% transaction fee. Scale runs $215/mo ($179/mo annually) with a 1% fee. Growth runs $425/mo ($354/mo annually), with the fee down to 0.5%.

Here is the part that sets Mighty Networks apart from everything else on this list, and not in its favour: there is no 0% tier. Even at $425/mo, Mighty Networks still takes half a percent of every sale. Every other platform here has a tier where the platform fee disappears.

The trade-off

At $95/mo to start, this is the most expensive entry point after Kajabi. It's also the least built around a single structured course.

The community features are the point here, not an add-on. On the plus side, the trial needs no credit card.

Who it fits

Mighty Networks fits a teacher running an ongoing program. Think a semester-long cohort, or a recurring membership where students benefit from talking to each other.

Questions worth asking before you sign a year-long plan

A few due-diligence questions catch problems most pricing pages don't volunteer upfront.

• What happens to my content if I cancel? Ask whether you can export video files and a student list, not just view them inside the platform.
• Do fees stack on top of card processing? A platform's own transaction fee sits separately from the roughly 3% a card processor charges regardless.
• Is the free trial long enough to test it? Seven days barely covers one lesson. Thirty gives you room to build something real first.
• Can I bring existing content in without rebuilding it? If you already have videos or an outline, ask specifically how import works before assuming it's simple.
• Does the price change if my course gets popular? A percentage-of-sales fee means your best month is also your most expensive one.

The bottom line: which one fits your course?

A teacher testing a first course on a tight budget is the clearest case for Flashcloud's Moodle route. The setup work happens once, and nothing gets taken from a sale afterward.

Want a working storefront today, and don't mind a percentage until sales justify upgrading? Teachable gets a course live fastest.

Building toward a multi-course program for an organization? Thinkific's flat pricing scales more predictably.

Already running coaching calls and a membership alongside your course? Kajabi consolidates it into one bill, at a real cost.

Want students to feel part of a group, not just viewers? Mighty Networks is built around exactly that.

Whichever fits, know the real cost before building a year of content on top of it. Compare Flashcloud's plans if owning the whole thing, with nothing taken off the top, sounds like the better trade.