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Teachable calls itself an all-in-one course platform. In practice the “one” ends at courses and checkout: email marketing is a separate subscription, automations run through Zapier, the Starter plan takes 7.5% of every sale, and the whole thing is rented. Schoolyland is the other path: one complete platform, every system actually included, built for you in 2 business days, that you own.
Founding launch: $1,990 setup + first year (reg. $3,500) · renewal locked at $790/yr · 0% platform fees, forever
Teachable’s Starter plan takes 7.5% of every transaction. Escaping the fee means a higher tier, and 0% only through teachable:pay, their payment processor. Either way, your success routes through their billing.
Email marketing isn’t built in: Teachable’s own help center points you to Kit, Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign, each a separate subscription. Automations beyond that run through Zapier. That makes the all-in-one a hub of paid add-ons.
The free plan is gone, prices climb, and the day you stop paying, access ends. Years of courses, students and sales history sit on a platform that was never yours.
Teachable is a fine course tool. But it isn’t your platform, and it was never the whole business.
Teachable is a course tool with paid add-ons around it, and Kajabi is the pricier full rental. Schoolyland is not a rental at all.
| Schoolyland | Teachable | Kajabi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A complete platform built for you, that you own | Course-and-checkout SaaS | All-in-one SaaS you subscribe to |
| Who owns the platform | You: your domain, your data, your files | Teachable | Kajabi |
| If you walk away | You keep everything. Host it anywhere | Access ends | Access ends |
| Platform fees on sales | 0%, forever (your own Stripe / PayPal) | 7.5% on Starter; 0% requires teachable:pay | 0% via Kajabi Payments only; a 2% to 0.5% platform fee applies through Stripe / PayPal |
| Email marketing & CRM | Built in: full CRM, 12,000 sends/mo included; or connect any email provider via API | Not included: external tool subscription | Included, within plan caps |
| Automations | Built in, across every system | Via Zapier (separate subscription) | Built in: a fixed menu of triggers and actions; no custom code |
| Courses & LMS | Full LMS: quizzes, certificates, drip, cohorts | Strong course builder | Strong native builder |
| Community · affiliates · video | All included | Affiliates yes; the rest partial | Higher tiers / partial |
| Run it with AI | Built in: AI runs every department of the business, and builds new features on request | MCP in beta: Growth+, waitlist; enrolls students, builds nothing | MCP connector on all plans (builds inside Kajabi only) |
| Extend & customize | Open WordPress: add plugins, build features, change anything. What you build lives in your database, and leaves with you | Head snippets from the Builder plan up, unsupported, and template edits stay in Teachable | Custom code allowed but unsupported; the code editor is Pro-only ($499/mo), and what you build stays in Kajabi |
| Setup | Done for you in 2 business days | DIY | DIY |
| Year 1 | $1,990 founding (reg. $3,500) | $348 to $1,668 + sale fees + add-on tools | $1,716 to $2,388 |
| 3 years | $3,570 (yours from day one) | $1,044 to $5,004 + fees & tools (you own nothing) | $5,148 to $7,164 (you own nothing) |
Sources: Teachable pricing · Kajabi pricing (annual billing where available). Last verified: August 10, 2026. Teachable Starter adds a 7.5% transaction fee; email marketing and Zapier automations are separate subscriptions. Schoolyland founding pricing is limited to 10 founding seats; regular pricing $3,500 + $990/yr.
Teachable and Kajabi are trademarks of their respective owners. Schoolyland is an independent company, not affiliated with or endorsed by either. If anything here is out of date, tell us and we’ll correct it.
Run the numbers on a creator selling $10,000 a year, and Teachable’s headline price stops being the real price.
$1,990 setup + first year, then $790/yr, locked and optional. Email, automations, community, affiliates and video are included, with 0% platform fees. The platform is yours from day one; after year one, renew everything, only what you need, or nothing.
$1,044 in plans + 7.5% of every sale ($2,250 on $30K) + the email tool and Zapier the “all-in-one” doesn’t include. The fee grows with every sale you make. You own nothing.
$2,388/yr on annual billing after the January 2026 increase. Everything included while you pay, nothing left when you stop.
With every rental, year 4 costs the same as year 1, and you still own nothing. Owning is the only option here whose cost drops after the first year.
The platform runs on your domain, under your name. Move it to any host, any time. It’s a standard, portable website, not an account on someone’s servers.
Students, subscribers, orders, emails and content all sit in databases you control and can export whole. There are no “request your data” forms, because the data never left your hands.
Sales land in your own Stripe or PayPal account. There is no platform fee and no required platform processor, so no one stands between you and your money.
Stop working with us and you lose exactly nothing: the site, the data and the customer relationships stay with you. We think that’s the only honest way to sell infrastructure.
A SaaS hands you a fixed menu of features, checkout and page builder, and your business adapts to the tool. Schoolyland is open WordPress: the world’s largest ecosystem of plugins and integrations, plus an AI layer that builds custom pieces on request.
Thousands of proven WordPress plugins: booking, podcasts, multilingual, memberships, marketplaces. If your business needs it, it exists, and it plugs into your platform.
Layouts, flows, checkout fields and member areas are all open to change, because nothing is locked. Ask the AI, or bring in any WordPress professional in the world; no proprietary platform gatekeeps the work.
Custom features, calculators, client portals and niche integrations can be developed for your exact workflow, on your platform, and they stay yours. There is no SaaS roadmap to send feature requests to.
Your platform connects directly to AI across every system and every department, rather than through a chatbot bolted on the side. Marketing, sales, content, design, SEO, email campaigns, community and reporting: the daily work of an entire team happens in a conversation. Because the platform is open, the AI can also build on it: new landing pages, automations, design changes and custom features.
The departments this covers, in practice
The savings span every department on this list. The hours, and the monthly retainers you’d pay service providers for each of these, become a conversation with your own platform.
Claim a founding seat. You choose the domain; we take it from there.
Your complete platform goes live with courses, checkout through your own PayPal or Stripe, email marketing, community and affiliates, all connected and ready to sell.
Your student list and transactions export as CSV, course files download one by one, videos re-upload, your email list imports from your email tool. Importers, step-by-step guides, the AI layer and our support carry you through it.
One exception: recurring subscriptions billed through Teachable can’t transfer, which is true of every platform switch. Your subscribers re-subscribe once through your own checkout. From that day the billing relationship is yours, permanently, with no 7.5% on the way through and no platform between you and your customers.
Ten founding seats. $1,990 for the platform and your first year (regular $3,500), with renewal locked at $790/yr for as long as you stay. Built and live in 2 business days, 0% platform fees forever.
2 business days delivery · you own everything · 650+ sites built by this team since 2020