COURSE PLATFORMS, COMPARED
Kajabi, Teachable and Thinkific run the course for you, by the month.Tome runs it on the site you already own.
If you sell a course, one of these platforms probably runs it, and it was the right way to start. This page is for the business whose course now has to live with the rest of it: what each one gives you, what a year costs at 5,000 contacts and $50,000 of sales when a professional does the work, what you can take with you, and when a hosted platform is the right call. For a first course, it usually is.
THE SHORT ANSWER
Their platform, or your site.
Choose Tome
If the course is one part of a business that has a site, members, a store or a CRM, and you want the course, the list and the checkout on your own domain, in your own design, in your own Stripe with nothing on top of its rate.
Choose Kajabi, Teachable or Thinkific
If the course is the business and you want video hosting, checkout, payouts, tax and a student app handled, with no site to run. Teachable Builder is $69 a month billed yearly; Kajabi Growth is $199.
Choose Circle
The community is the product here, and courses come second. Professional is $89 a month billed yearly, plus 2% of sales on top of Stripe.
THE TABLE
Four ways to sell a course.
| Feature | Tome | Kajabi | Teachable | Thinkific |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | The Learning engine on your site: courses, lessons, progress, quizzes, certificates, next to the pages, store and CRM in one database | Site, courses, funnels, email, a community and checkout, all inside Kajabi | Courses, checkout, student apps; email and a community from Builder up | Courses, checkout, communities; no blog |
| The plan | Learning $300 a year; Commerce $400 a year, set up with us; the Craft Library $250 | Growth $199 a month billed yearly ($249 monthly); Basic $143 caps contacts at 2,500 | Builder $69 a month billed yearly ($89); Growth $139 ($189) for certificates and no branding | Start $82 a month billed yearly ($109); Grow $164 to remove the branding |
| On a $500 sale | Stripe's rate, 2.9% + 30¢, nothing on top: $14.80 | 2.8% + 30¢ on Kajabi Payments: $14.30. Keep your own Stripe and Growth adds 1% | 2.9% + 30¢ on Teachable Pay; 7.5% of the sale on Starter; no option to use your own Stripe | 2.9% on Thinkific Payments. Your own Stripe adds 2% on Start and 5% on Basic |
| Contacts and email | CRM & Marketing engine, $400 a year, no contact count; your provider's send rates | 25,000 contacts on Growth; over the cap, the account locks after 30 days | Built-in email from Builder up; campaign email goes to an outside provider | Email automation on every plan; CRM integrations on Plus only |
| Certificates and quizzes | Included | Included | Quizzes on every plan; certificates from Growth | Quizzes on every plan; certificates from Start |
| The site around it | The whole site, 161 blocks, your design, no branding | A site and a blog; Kajabi branding until Pro at $399 a month; custom code is outside support | Site pages; no native blog, a third-party one instead | Site pages; no blog; branding until Grow |
| Where the money lands | Your Stripe account | Kajabi Payments, or your own Stripe with the surcharge | Teachable Pay, a Stripe Express dashboard inside Teachable | Thinkific Payments to your bank, or your Stripe with the surcharge |
| What you can take when you leave | The code, the database, the videos on your own host | Contacts as CSV; videos one at a time; blog posts can't be exported | Student and transaction CSVs; the course "can't be opened or read by any other software" | CSV reports; no whole-course export and no bulk download |
| Year one, doing it yourself | About $3,100: engines and library, plus Stripe's fees on $50,000 | $3,818 on Growth | $2,308 on Builder; $3,148 on Growth | $2,434 on Start |
| Built and kept by a professional, year one | An MVP platform: $25,000 fixed plus $300 to $700 a month; with a developer of your own, the engine is $300 a year | About $11,200 with site setup and an upkeep plan; about $63,800 with a done-for-you course build and monthly operations | About $9,700 to $10,500, and about $62,300 to $63,100 done-for-you | About $9,800, and about $62,400 done-for-you |
Sources for every cell are at the bottom of the page.
YOUR DOMAIN, YOUR STRIPE
What stays yours when a course sells.
01
You can take it with you
None of the three exports a whole course. Teachable's help page says the course is stored "in a unique format that can't be opened or read by any other software." Thinkific says there's "no bulk download." Kajabi says blog posts "cannot be exported," and videos come down one at a time. Contacts leave as CSV everywhere; the thing you built doesn't. A Tome course is lessons in your database, video on a host you pay directly, and a site in your repository. Nothing has to be rebuilt to leave, because nothing is anywhere but yours.
02
Priced by the year, and nothing on top of a sale
Kajabi Growth is $2,388 a year billed yearly, Teachable Growth $1,668, and the branding comes off at $399 a month on Kajabi. Tome's Learning engine is $300 a year and Commerce $400, on any plan including Free. On the sale itself, Kajabi Payments at 2.8% matches Stripe and this page says so. The surcharges start when you keep your own Stripe: 1% on Kajabi Growth, 2% on Thinkific Start, 5% on Thinkific Basic, 2% on Circle. Tome charges nothing on a sale, at any volume.
03
Enroll and watch it save
Enroll in a course on starter.wabbit.com and watch progress save. That's the Learning engine on a site that also sells, and nobody takes a cut. It's the same foundation we build client platforms on.
Open the demo →WHERE KAJABI WINS
When the course is the whole business.
It's your first course
It's your first course. Teachable Builder at $69 a month or Podia Shaker at $84, plus Stripe, gets you live with no build fee. A professional build on any platform starts in the thousands; until the offer is proven, rent.
Don't want to run video
You don't want to run video. Teachable includes up to a terabyte of storage and student apps on every plan; Thinkific includes 100 to 400 GB of bandwidth a month; Kajabi streams through Wistia. On your own site, video is a host you choose and pay.
The community is the product
The community is the product. Circle is built around it: spaces, live streams, gamification, unlimited members. If the courses are secondary, its depth beats a build.
Payouts and tax handled
You want payouts and tax handled. Kajabi Payments, Teachable Pay and Thinkific Payments bundle checkout, payouts and sales-tax tooling, and the vendor owns the patching and the uptime.
If the course is the whole business, Kajabi's rent buys you a lot. Tome is for the business the course is part of.
WHAT IT COSTS
The software by the year, the work by the job.
The blocks
Free
$0
Marketing Starter and Content Writer, 19 blocks. A free account, no card, no trial.
Craft Library
$250/yr
Every paid pack and theme. Stop whenever you like: what you've installed keeps working; you just stop receiving new releases.
The engines · added per project, on any plan
Learning
$300/yr
Courses, lessons, and progress.
Commerce
$400/yr
Catalog and checkout, set up with us because it touches payments.
CRM & Marketing
$400/yr
Contacts, pipeline, campaigns, and intake forms.
Agency
$4,800/yr
Every engine included, for studios running many client sites.
Their cut of every sale, or a flat year.
Tools only means you run the course yourself, on a platform's own plan and its own payment processor. Built and kept means a professional builds it and stays on to keep it patched.
About $2,308 to $2,434 a year
Teachable Builder or Thinkific Start, at $50,000 of sales through the platform's own processor at roughly Stripe's rate. Teachable has no option to use your own Stripe.About $3,818 a year
Growth plan billed yearly, with Kajabi Payments matching Stripe's rate, or your own Stripe with a 1% surcharge on top of it.Roughly $9,700 to $64,000
Site setup and an upkeep plan at the low end; a done-for-you course build with video and monthly operations at the high end.$3,950, and the site is yours outright
$2,750 for the site and $100 a month for Care, which keeps it patched and current.$25,000 fixed, plus $300 to $700 a month
The retainer is roughly 15% a year; with a developer of your own, the Learning engine alone is $300 a year and the work is theirs.From $55,000
Always scoped first in a $5,000 Architecture Sprint that's credited to the build.A course platform is cheaper the month you start and dearer every month a course sells. Tome's Learning engine is a flat year on your own domain, and the sale goes through your Stripe.
FIVE STEPS
From a hosted course to a running platform.
- STEP 01
Export what exports.
Contacts and students come out as CSV on every platform. Download the videos one at a time and budget the afternoon it takes. The lessons themselves are re-entered, because no platform exports a course as a unit.
- STEP 02
Choose a video host you pay directly.
Bunny or Mux, in your own account, so the library is yours from the first upload.
- STEP 03
Model the operation, not the course.
The Architecture Sprint is two weeks and $5,000, credited to the build: the data model, the phases, the risks, and an exact price. If you don't build with us, you keep the architecture.
- STEP 04
Build it, or install it.
An MVP is $25,000 fixed; a full platform starts at $55,000. If you have a developer and a Payload project, the Learning engine installs with one npm install and a free account, certificates and progress included.
- STEP 05
Run both until the last cohort finishes, then time the cutover to your renewal.
Care is $100 a month for a site; the platform retainer runs $300 to $700. Security patches, platform updates and backups are ours to do, and the code stays yours.
WHERE TO NEXT
Move a course, or watch one run.
Browse the blocks
All 161, with live previews.
Two packs are free with a no-card account.
Browse the blocks →See it running
One Tome install doing all of it at once.
starter.wabbit.com
Open the demo →Have it built
If the course has to live with the rest of the business, a platform shaped to it is what we do.
How we build platforms →Checked 25 September 2026.
If something here has gone out of date, tell us and we'll fix it.
Pricing · Contact limits · Certificates · Custom code and support · Export and video download (Kajabi's help centre) · Payouts
/blocks (the live block count) · /subscribe (plans) · /platform-builds (builds, Sprint, retainer) · /pricing