The top competitors for Skool in the educational tech market are Podia, Teachable, Kajabi, Thinkific, Mighty Networks, Circle, and CreativeMindClass. These platforms excel in various aspects of online course creation and management, and community building. Podia and Teachable focus on simplifying the course creation process. Kajabi and Thinkific offer impressive marketing and analytics tools. Mighty Networks and Circle specialize in creating engaging communities, while CreativeMindClass stands out by fostering creativity through specialized courses. If you’re keen to explore more about these platforms, there’s a treasure trove of information to come.
Podia
Dipping into the pool of Skool alternatives, we come across Podia, a vibrant platform that stands out by enabling creators to sell their online courses, memberships, and digital goods, all under one roof. This dynamic platform not only simplifies the process of creating, marketing, and selling digital products, but also provides a thorough suite of tools to facilitate these tasks.
Podia’s user-friendly interface is a refreshing change, making the process of creating and selling digital products straightforward and efficient. It also offers a customizable storefront, allowing you to maintain a consistent brand image across your platform. This is a feature not commonly found in other alternatives, setting Podia apart.
Moreover, Podia’s email marketing capabilities make reaching and engaging your audience a breeze. It enables you to build an engaged community, foster relationships, and ultimately, increase your sales. The secure checkout experience guarantees smooth transactions, and the real-time customer support is always ready to lend a helping hand.
Podia’s pricing plans are varied, catering to different needs. The Free Plan allows you to build a website, products, and a community at no cost, albeit with a 10% fee. The Starter Plan, priced at $9/month, offers a custom domain and personalized website. The Mover Plan, at $39/month, allows the selling of online courses and other digital products. Finally, the Shaker Plan, at $89/month for the first year, provides advanced marketing features for business scaling.
Teachable
Among the myriad of Skool competitors, Teachable emerges as a unique contender. Unlike other platforms, Teachable focuses exclusively on building online learning courses. It does this superbly, handling all the complexities of course creation and management. From distributing materials to tracking students’ progress, Teachable makes it easy for you.
Setting up a course on Teachable is a breeze. You don’t need to be tech-savvy, as the platform guides you through every step. But while Teachable excels at hosting courses, it falls short in a few areas that are worth noting.
- Lack of Community Building: Unlike Skool, Teachable isn’t designed to foster a community of learners. If you value interactive learning, you’ll need to integrate third-party tools, which could add to your costs.
- Limited Customization: Your course on Teachable will end up looking similar to many others because customization options are minimal.
- No Free Plan: Unlike Skool, Teachable doesn’t offer a free plan. Plus, there’s a 5% fee on the Basic Plan.
- Poor Customer Support: Many users have reported that Teachable’s customer support is less than stellar, which can be frustrating when you encounter problems.
Teachable does have some strong points, though. It offers built-in email marketing, integrated payment processing, and a program that generates course completion certificates. Plus, it provides a variety of payment options. Despite its limitations, Teachable remains a strong Skool competitor, especially for those focused primarily on course creation and delivery.
Kajabi
If you’re primarily focused on crafting engaging, pre-recorded courses, then Kajabi might just be the Skool alternative you’re looking for. Recognized for its robust Learning Management System (LMS), Kajabi provides an array of tools designed to create an immersive course experience. These include diverse content options and templates, assignments, quizzes, and the ability to drip content.
Kajabi really stands out with its marketing funnels. It gives you the power to create and customize landing pages, choose from a variety of funnels, and pick opt-in templates and presets to fit your needs. This powerful feature set makes it an excellent choice for those looking to not only deliver content but also to effectively market their courses.
However, it’s worth noting that Kajabi’s community features aren’t as strong as some other platforms. While it recently acquired Vibely and launched Community 2.0, which includes chat rooms and video calling, these features exist on a separate platform. This means your users would need to log on separately and use a different app, which can affect the user experience.
Mighty Networks
Shifting gears to look at Mighty Networks opens up a whole new world of community-building possibilities. As G2’s top-ranked community platform, Mighty Networks brings together communities, courses, and live events under one roof. It’s a thorough platform that not only supports your community-building efforts, but it also allows you to earn from it.
Mighty Networks’ robust feature set is something worth noting. Here are the top 4 features that set it apart:
- Communities: Mighty Networks equips you with an array of tools to foster engagement in your community. From customized activity feeds to member profiles, chat, forums, messaging, polls, and more – it’s all there. Plus, its built-in community AI, Mighty Co-host™, automates tasks without compromising creativity.
- Monetization: With Mighty Networks, monetization is a breeze. Sell memberships, packages, coaching, masterminds, and courses, and build bundles. You can choose from 135 different currencies, or even monetize with token-gating.
- Courses: Building a course is simple thanks to its intuitive and powerful Learning Management System. You can add various types of content, hold discussions on each module, and customize the feel of your course.
- Native Livestreaming: Teach live with native livestreaming. It supports discussion and multi-speaker view, adding a dynamic edge to your teaching approach.
In a nutshell, Mighty Networks is redefining what a community platform can be. It provides a level of flexibility and functionality that’s hard to find on Skool, making it a compelling alternative.
Circle
While exploring alternatives to Skool, Circle emerges as a solid contender. Offering a blend of forums, online courses, and membership site elements, it’s an all-in-one community platform that’s been designed with creators, educators, and businesses in mind.
Circle’s user-friendly interface makes it easy for anyone to start building their online community. It provides extensive customization options, allowing for a unique and personalized community experience. Its powerful integrations with other platforms and tools also make it a versatile choice, adding to its appeal.
One of Circle’s standout features is its robust discussion threads and direct messaging. These tools are designed to facilitate meaningful connections and engaging discussions, mirroring the best aspects of social media platforms. It also provides secure admin controls for efficient community management, as well as insightful analytics for evaluating community data.
In terms of pricing, Circle offers a free 14-day trial. After that, you can opt for the Professional Plan at $99/month, which includes key community-building features, course hosting, live streams, unlimited members, and custom branding. The Business Plan at $219/month offers additional features like workflows, API access, and email white-labeling. The Enterprise Plan at $399/month provides full feature access, dedicated services, priority support, and lower transaction fees.
CreativeMindClass
CreativeMindClass stands out with its distinctive approach to online learning. While Skool focuses on providing a general platform for various subjects, CreativeMindClass has carved a niche for itself by concentrating on fostering creativity.
- Content Diversity: CreativeMindClass offers a wide range of courses, from painting and photography to writing and music production. This diversity attracts a broad spectrum of learners, which isn’t always the case with Skool.
- Community Interaction: The platform facilitates interaction among learners. This community-driven approach encourages students to share their work, exchange ideas, and collaborate on projects, fostering a sense of camaraderie that’s often absent in online learning platforms.
- Instructor Support: CreativeMindClass offers ample support to instructors. This includes tools to create engaging course content, manage their online classrooms, and interact effectively with students. They also provide marketing support, helping instructors reach their target audience.
- Flexible Pricing: Finally, CreativeMindClass offers a flexible pricing model. Learners can pay for individual courses or opt for a subscription model, providing unlimited access to all courses. This flexibility gives it an edge over Skool, which doesn’t offer such a subscription model.
Thinkific
Moving from CreativeMindClass, another powerful contender in the domain of Skool alternatives is Thinkific. This platform is a great choice for educators, trainers, and businesses looking to expand their reach and monetize their expertise. Thinkific offers user-friendly course creation tools, a variety of customizable course templates, built-in marketing tools, and flexible monetization options.
Creating a course with Thinkific is a breeze, even for those without a lot of tech skills. The platform’s course templates save you time and guarantee your content always looks professional. Plus, with Thinkific’s integrated marketing tools, you can promote your courses, attract more students, and increase your visibility.
Thinkific also offers flexible monetization options. You can choose to provide free or paid courses, or even subscription-based content. This enables you to cater to different market segments and pricing strategies.
One of the standout features of Thinkific is its seamless integration with a wide range of third-party tools, such as email marketing platforms and payment gateways. This makes it easier to enroll students and collect payments.
Thinkific’s robust analytics and reporting features help you monitor student progress, evaluate course performance, and identify areas for improvement. This data-driven approach helps you continuously enhance your educational offerings.
In terms of pricing, Thinkific’s plans are competitive and offer good value for the features provided. However, while the templates are customizable, the design customization is somewhat limited. Despite this, Thinkific remains a high-quality Skool alternative.
Conclusion
So there you have it, the top 7 competitors to Skool. Each offers its unique blend of features, from Podia’s simplicity to Kajabi’s advanced marketing tools. Remember, the best platform depends on your specific needs as an educator or learner. Take your time, compare, and pick the one that fits you best.
Happy learning!
*prices referred to were as of the writing of the article – please check their current prices if you want to know more*
For current prices, here are direct links to their sites:
Mighty Networks Pricing