Teachable vs systeme.io: the fivefold price gap for the same three jobs
Put the two pricing pages side by side and the comparison looks absurd: Teachable's Builder plan is $119 a month, systeme.io's Startup is $17. Both will host your course, process your checkout, and email your students. A fivefold gap for the same three jobs is either a scam or a clue. It is a clue — but about structure, not value.
The verified numbers
| Teachable (verified Oct 23, 2026) | systeme.io (verified Oct 23, 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid tier | Starter — $59/mo ($39/mo annual = $468/yr), 7.5% transaction fee | Startup — $17/mo (page shows annual-billing view), 0% fees on every tier |
| Middle tier | Builder — $119/mo ($89 annual = $1,068/yr), 0% fee, 10 products | Webinar — $47/mo, 0% fee |
| Top tier | Growth — $239/mo ($189 annual = $2,268/yr), 0% fee, 50 products | Unlimited — $97/mo, 0% fee |
| Free option | None — 7-day trial + 30-day money-back guarantee | Free plan: 2,000 contacts, 3 funnels, 1 automation rule |
| Signature quirk | Product-count caps (5 / 10 / 50) | Unlimited sub-accounts, each carrying your plan's full quota |
Full line-by-line breakdowns: Teachable pricing explained and systeme.io pricing explained.
Where each one wins
Teachable wins the learning experience. Course curriculum structure, student progress, completion tracking and a checkout built for "buy this course" are its core product, refined over a decade. The renamed lineup (Starter/Builder/Growth replaced Basic/Pro this year) is cosmetic; the product underneath is not. If your revenue is a course that costs real money and students expect a real classroom, Teachable's price buys a category-leading delivery layer.
systeme.io wins the math and the breadth. At 0% fees, every dollar of a $47 course sale stays yours except the card processor's cut — while Teachable Starter keeps 92.5% and only above its product cap do you escape the fee. And the free plan (2,000 contacts, real funnels) means the platform costs nothing while you build. The unlimited sub-accounts are the sleeper feature: an agency or consultant can run a separate workspace per client, each with the full quota of your plan — structure no course-first platform offers.
The decision, by situation
- You are validating a first course. systeme.io's free plan and 0% fees. Nothing about an unproven course deserves a $59/month floor plus a fee on every sale. The fee economics are dissected in our Teachable breakdown — Starter's 7.5% is a bet against your volume.
- You have a proven course and a serious student experience to deliver. Teachable Builder, once annual sales justify the $1,068 and the 0% fee. The break-even against Starter is around $667/month in sales; below that, Starter with its fee can be the cheaper total.
- You sell more than courses — funnels, coaching offers, multiple small products. systeme.io. Its funnel-and-email breadth matches a portfolio of small offers; Teachable's product caps (5 on Starter) punish exactly that shape.
- You serve clients who each need their own course setup. systeme.io, almost by default. Sub-accounts with inherited quotas are a consultant/agency structure; Teachable has no equivalent.
The honest middle case
For many creators the true comparison is not these two but each against Podia — which sits between them on price and puts no product caps at the bottom — and against Teachable vs Podia specifically, where the fee flips the answer at $333/month in sales. The broader alternatives are in Teachable alternatives and Podia alternatives.
What we cannot verify
Both vendors' figures were read from their own pricing pages on October 23, 2026: Teachable's Starter/Builder/Growth lineup, fees and product caps from its page's structured pricing data (the lineup was renamed this year and much third-party coverage still quotes retired tiers); systeme.io's tier prices from its annual-billing view — its monthly-billing figures were not displayed to us and we do not print derived ones. We have not built identical courses on both platforms to compare delivery quality hands-on; the product-character statements reflect each vendor's documented feature set and market position, not benchmark testing. Regional pricing may differ. See How We Test.