You’ve got a course idea. Maybe you’ve already outlined the modules, recorded a few lessons, or even built a following that’s asking for it. Now comes the question that trips up almost every course creator we talk to: where do I actually put this thing?
The two most common paths are a hosted platform like Teachable or a self-hosted WordPress site with an LMS plugin. Both can work. But they solve different problems, and choosing the wrong one can cost you months of frustration and thousands of dollars in switching costs down the road.
We’ve built dozens of course websites for small businesses, coaches, and ministry organizations. Here’s what we’ve learned about when each option makes sense — and when it doesn’t.
What “Self-Hosted” and “Hosted” Actually Mean
Before we compare features, let’s make sure we’re talking about the same thing.
A hosted platform like Teachable handles everything for you. They provide the servers, the course player, the checkout system, and the student dashboard. You sign up, upload your content, and you’re live. It’s like renting an apartment — furnished, utilities included, but you follow the landlord’s rules.
A self-hosted course website means you own the WordPress installation on your own hosting account. You add an LMS plugin like TutorLMS or LearnDash to handle the course functionality. You control the design, the features, the data, and the integrations.
It’s like owning your house. More responsibility, but also more freedom.
The right choice depends on where you are in your business, how much control you need, and what your long-term plans look like.
The Real Cost Comparison
Teachable’s pricing looks straightforward at first. Their basic plan starts around $39/month, and their pro plan runs about $119/month. But the sticker price only tells part of the story.
On the basic plan, Teachable takes a 5% transaction fee on every sale. If you sell $10,000 worth of courses in a year, that’s $500 gone right off the top — on top of your monthly fee. The pro plan removes that transaction fee but costs more upfront.
You also hit limitations quickly. Custom domains, advanced reporting, priority support, and certain integrations are locked behind higher tiers. Drip content scheduling, affiliate programs, and advanced quiz features all require upgrades. By the time you unlock everything a serious course creator needs, you’re often spending $119 to $199 per month.
A self-hosted WordPress site with an LMS plugin has different economics. Good managed hosting runs $25 to $75 per month depending on your traffic. A plugin like TutorLMS costs roughly $149 to $249 per year for a pro license. LearnDash is similar. Add a payment plugin like WooCommerce (free) and you’re looking at $50 to $100 per month all-in, with zero transaction fees beyond what your payment processor charges.
The gap widens as you scale. At $50,000 in annual course revenue, Teachable’s basic plan has cost you $2,500 in transaction fees alone. Your self-hosted site costs the same whether you sell $1,000 or $100,000.
There’s a catch, though. Self-hosted sites need maintenance. Updates, security patches, backups, plugin compatibility — someone has to manage all of that. If you’re doing it yourself, that’s your time. If you’re hiring someone, that’s an ongoing cost. We offer managed website services that handle this entirely, which is worth considering if you’d rather focus on creating content than troubleshooting PHP errors.
Design and Branding Freedom
This is where the gap gets wide.
Teachable gives you templates. They’re clean, they work, and you can customize colors and logos. But every Teachable site looks like a Teachable site. Your course lives inside their ecosystem, and your students experience their interface, their checkout flow, their student dashboard.
You can add a custom domain, which helps. But the URL structure, the page layouts, the email templates — those all follow Teachable’s rules. If you want a unique landing page design, a custom checkout experience, or deep integration with your existing website, you’re going to hit walls.
With a self-hosted WordPress site, you control everything. Your course pages match your brand exactly because they’re part of your actual website. Students go from your homepage to your course catalog to the checkout page without ever leaving your domain or encountering a different design language.
This matters more than most people think. Brand consistency builds trust. When a potential student clicks from your blog post to your course sales page and the design feels completely different, there’s a subconscious friction. It’s small, but it adds up across hundreds of visitors.
For businesses that already have an established WordPress website — and especially those selling to professional audiences — a self-hosted course that lives inside your existing site almost always converts better than sending people to an external Teachable page.
Features That Matter (and Ones That Don’t)
Let’s talk about what you actually need versus what sounds impressive on a comparison chart.
Teachable handles the basics well. Video hosting, basic quizzes, completion certificates, student management, and simple payment processing all work out of the box. If your course is straightforward — watch videos, maybe answer a few quiz questions, get a certificate — Teachable delivers that with minimal setup time.
Where Teachable struggles is anything beyond the basics. Advanced quiz types, prerequisite course flows, content gating strategies, complex pricing models, and deep third-party integrations all require workarounds or simply aren’t possible. If you want to sell course bundles alongside physical products, run a membership site with tiered access, or build an interactive learning experience with assignments and peer review, you’ll feel the constraints.
WordPress LMS plugins give you significantly more flexibility. TutorLMS and LearnDash both support advanced quizzing, assignment submissions, drip content, prerequisite logic, certificates, and gradebooks. Because they run on WordPress, you can extend functionality with thousands of plugins. Need a forum? Add BuddyBoss or bbPress. Need complex email automation? Connect FluentCRM or ActiveCampaign. Need a full e-commerce store alongside your courses? WooCommerce handles it.
The integration story is really the deciding factor for many businesses. If your course is one part of a larger online presence — alongside a blog, a services page, an email list, maybe even a client portal — self-hosted WordPress lets everything live under one roof. With Teachable, your course always lives in a silo.
When Teachable Actually Wins
We wouldn’t be giving you the full picture if we didn’t acknowledge where Teachable genuinely shines.
If you’re launching your first course and you need to validate the idea before investing in infrastructure, Teachable gets you to market fast. Really fast. You can go from zero to a live course page with payment processing in an afternoon. There’s real value in that speed when you’re testing whether anyone will actually buy what you’re selling.
Teachable also wins for solo creators who don’t want to think about technology at all. No hosting to manage, no plugins to update, no security to monitor. You upload your content and Teachable handles the rest. For someone who breaks into a cold sweat at the phrase “WordPress update,” that peace of mind is worth the premium.
And if you’re selling a single, simple course with no plans to build a complex learning ecosystem, Teachable’s limitations may never affect you. A cooking instructor selling one video course probably doesn’t need prerequisite logic or advanced quiz branching.
The pattern we see consistently: Teachable works best as a starting point or for simple use cases. But course creators who are serious about building a long-term education business almost always outgrow it within 12 to 18 months.
Making the Decision
Here’s the framework we walk our clients through.
Choose Teachable if you’re testing a course idea for the first time, you have no existing website (or your website isn’t on WordPress), you want to launch in days rather than weeks, and your course is a standalone product rather than part of a larger business ecosystem.
Choose self-hosted WordPress if you already have a WordPress website, you plan to sell multiple courses or build a membership, you need deep integrations with your existing tools, you want full control over design and student experience, and you’re thinking about this as a long-term revenue channel.
If you’re somewhere in the middle — you’ve validated your course idea on Teachable and you’re ready to level up — that’s actually the most common time we hear from people. The migration from Teachable to a self-hosted LMS website is very doable, but it’s easier the earlier you make the switch. The longer you wait, the more student data, course content, and integrations you’ll need to migrate.
One thing worth mentioning: a self-hosted site doesn’t have to mean doing everything yourself. Working with a team that specializes in course website builds can get you launched just as quickly as Teachable, with none of the long-term limitations. That’s a significant part of what we do at NorthMac — we handle the technical build and ongoing maintenance so you can focus on creating great course content.
If you’re weighing your options and want a clearer picture of what a self-hosted course site would look like for your specific situation, reach out to our team. We’re happy to walk through it with you.
