Moodle vs Teachable: Which Should You Use to Sell or Run Courses?

Teachable and Moodle both let you put courses online, but they come from opposite directions. Teachable is a hosted course store: you sign up, upload your videos, build a sales page, and start selling, with checkout handled for you. Moodle is a full learning management system you own and run, built for structured courses, real assessments, cohorts, and reporting. Choosing between them comes down to whether you are selling content or running a learning operation. This guide lays out the real differences, including what each actually costs, so you can tell which one you are.

Here is the short version:

What Teachable is good at

Teachable is built for creators who want to sell courses without touching technology. You can launch in an afternoon. Course pages, sales pages, checkout, and student emails are all handled inside one hosted product, so there is no server, no updates, and no plugins to manage. For a coach, consultant, or expert turning their knowledge into a few video courses, that speed is the whole point, and it is genuinely good at it.

Where it stops is depth. Teachable is a store for content, not a system for running learning. Its quizzes are simple, auto-graded checks rather than a full assessment system, there is no gradebook of the kind schools and training providers rely on, and it does not support SCORM content. If your courses are videos plus a few knowledge checks, none of that matters. If they are structured training with graded work, it matters a lot.

What Moodle is good at

Moodle is an open-source learning management system used by tens of thousands of institutions. It does the things a course store does not: structured courses with prerequisites and automatic progression, quizzes with many question types, graded assignments, a proper gradebook, SCORM packages, roles for learners, teachers, and administrators, cohorts for intakes, completion tracking, and detailed reporting. You own it, so your platform, your courses, and your learner data are yours to keep and move.

Moodle can also sell courses. Its built-in enrolment on payment method lets you set a price on a course and grant access once a learner pays, with PayPal supported in core and Stripe available through plugins, and there is no platform fee on top of the processor's own charges. The trade-off is that Moodle is a system to set up and run, it does not come with marketing pages, and out of the box it looks generic. We cover how to do the setup properly in how to set up Moodle the right way.

What each one actually costs

Teachable's pricing is simple to start and climbs as you grow. At the time of writing, plans billed annually run from $29 a month on Starter, which also takes a 7.5% fee on every sale, to $69 a month on Builder with no platform fee, to $139 a month on Growth. Growth is the first plan that includes your own custom domain and completion certificates, and there are limits on how many products you can sell on each tier. Card processing fees apply on every plan. Check Teachable's pricing page for the current numbers, since they change.

Moodle's software is free, but running it is not. You pay for hosting, for setting it up properly, and for keeping it updated and supported, and if you want it to look like your own brand you pay for theming or a custom frontend. There is no per-sale platform fee and no product limit, so the economics shift in Moodle's favour as your catalogue and revenue grow. We break the numbers down in our guide to how much a custom LMS costs.

A simple way to think about it: Teachable has low starting costs that rise with success. Moodle has higher starting costs and flatter costs as you scale.

The questions that actually decide it

Are you selling content or running learning? If you sell recorded courses to individuals, Teachable is built for exactly that. If you run cohorts, grade work, issue certificates against real completion criteria, or train teams for organisations, that is learning management, and Moodle is built for it.

How many courses, and how fast are you growing? Product limits and per-sale fees are easy to ignore at the start and expensive later. A growing academy with a wide catalogue reaches the point where owning the platform costs less than renting one.

Whose brand is it? On Teachable you work within its templates, and your own domain needs the Growth plan. Moodle runs on your domain from day one, can be fully themed, and with a custom frontend can look entirely like your own product. We built exactly that for Ehel Academy.

Do your courses need SCORM, graded assignments, or detailed reporting? If yes, that settles it on its own, because Teachable does not do those things.

When you have outgrown Teachable

Many creators start on Teachable, which is a sensible way to prove there is demand before investing in a platform. The signs you have outgrown it are consistent: you are bumping into product limits, you are paying for a higher tier mainly to get your own domain or certificates, you are selling to organisations that expect cohorts and reporting, your courses need graded work or SCORM, or the platform has become part of what you sell and needs to feel like your brand. When those show up, it is time to look at owning your platform.

Moving is a rebuild rather than a transfer, so plan it like a project. Your content, your structure, and everything you learned about your learners carry over, which makes the second platform faster to build than the first.

The option most people miss

The usual reason course businesses stay on Teachable is that Moodle looks dated and needs a website in front of it. Both are solvable. Put a proper website in front for marketing and sales, which is our web design work, and give Moodle a branded look or a fully custom frontend on your own domain, so learners get an experience as polished as any course store with the full power of a learning platform underneath. We explain the approach in why a custom frontend beats building your own LMS. If you are weighing Moodle against the free option schools use instead, see our comparison of Moodle vs Google Classroom.

Frequently asked questions

Is Moodle better than Teachable?

They are built for different jobs. Teachable is a hosted course store: quick to launch, with checkout and sales pages built in, and ideal for a solo creator selling a handful of video courses. Moodle is a full learning management system you own, with real assessments, grading, SCORM, roles, cohorts, and reporting, which suits academies, schools, and training businesses.

Can you sell courses on Moodle?

Yes. Moodle has a built-in enrolment on payment method connected to payment gateways, so you can set a price on a course and grant access once a learner pays. PayPal is supported in core and Stripe is available through plugins. There is no platform fee per sale, only the payment processor's own fees. What Moodle does not include is a marketing website or sales pages, so most course businesses pair it with a proper website.

Does Teachable support SCORM?

No. Teachable does not support SCORM packages, and its quizzes are simple auto-graded checks rather than a full assessment system with a gradebook. If your courses rely on SCORM content, graded assignments, or detailed learner reporting, a learning management system like Moodle is the better fit.

Which one to choose

If you are a solo creator selling a few video courses and want to launch fast without technical help, start on Teachable. If you run cohorts, grade work, need SCORM or reporting, sell to organisations, or are building an academy whose catalogue will keep growing, choose Moodle, and plan for a website in front of it and a look that matches your brand.

At KWA Digital we set up Moodle for academies and training businesses, brand it or build custom frontends on it, and design the websites that sell the courses. See our LMS development service or get in touch and we will tell you honestly which platform fits where you are.